Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (36 page)

A full bladder is about the size of a Softball.

Thornton had hoped his work was done, but it was just beginning—he and his workers spent the rest of the day burying their mistake. His blunder drew the attention of news stations all over the country, but amazingly, he was promoted just six months later.

Twenty-five years later, the tale of the exploding whale is documented all over the Internet. And the Oregon Highway Division still gets calls about it today—many callers hoping to get their hands on the video. The whale is still dead, but the story took on a life of its own.

The Heart Was Taken

Q:
Why do people cross their fingers for good luck?

A:
“The practice may have evolved from the sign of the cross, which was believed to ward off evil.” (From
The Book of Answers,
by Barbara Berliner)

Yee-Haw!

Q:
In movie Westerns, people fire guns straight up into the air as warning shots or just to make noise during a celebration. But those bullets have to come down somewhere. How dangerous will they be if they hit somebody?

A:
“Physics tells us that when it hits the ground the bullet will have the same velocity it had when it left the muzzle of the pistol, 700 to 800 mph. But that ignores air resistance. Realistically, the bullet’s landing speed can be around 100 to 150 mph. That’s more than enough speed to do serious or lethal damage to a cranial landing site.

“And by the way, the jerk who fires the bullet isn’t very likely to be hit by it. In one experiment, out of 500 machine-gun bullets fired straight upward, only 4 landed within 10 feet (3 meters) of the gun. Wind has a great effect, since bullets can reach altitudes of 4,000 to 8,000 feet (1,200 to 2,400 meters) before falling back down. (From
What Einstein Told His Barber,
by Robert. L. Wolke)

Whales dream.

They give an awful lot of interviews, but sports stars aren’t always the most articulate people. Maybe they should keep their mouths shut…nah.

“The doctors X-rayed my head and found nothing.”

—Dizzy Dean

“Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I can assure you it is much more important than that.”

—Bill Shankly

“I want all the kids to do what I do, to look up to me. I want all the kids to copulate me.”

—Andre Dawson, Chicago Cubs outfielder

“Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”

—Joe Theismann

“I’m not allowed to comment on lousy officiating.”

—Jim Finks, New Orleans Saints G.M., when asked what he thought of the refs

“You guys pair up in groups of three, then line up in a circle.”

—Bill Peterson, Florida State football coach

“Better make it six; I can’t eat eight.”

—Pitcher Dan Osinski, when asked if he wanted his pizza cut into six or eight slices

“We’re going to turn this team around three hundred sixty degrees.”

—Jason Kidd

“Left hand, right hand, it doesn’t matter. I’m amphibious.”

—Charles Shackleford, NCSU basketball player

“I’m not an athlete. I’m a professional baseball player.”

—John Kruk

“Are you any relation to your brother Marv?”

—Leon Wood, to announcer Steve Albert

“He’s a guy who gets up at six o’clock in the morning regardless of what time it is.”

—Lou Duva, boxing trainer, on the regimen of heavyweight Andrew Golota

More people die playing golf than any other sport. Leading causes: heart attacks and strokes.

Here’s living proof that the urge to invent something
—
anything
—
is more powerful than the urge to make sure that the invention will be something that people will actually want to use.

T
he Invention:
Personal Sound Muffler

What It Does:
Have you ever wanted to scream in the middle of a crowded room? With this device, you can… without disturbing others. About the size of a dust mask, the muffler’s interior is made of sound-absorbing foam, with a saddle-shaped opening that seals tightly to the user’s face. Extra bonus: “A microphone mounted at the bottom of the muffler activates a light, giving the user immediate visual feedback as to the intensity of sound produced.”

The Invention:
Bulletproof Dress Shirt

What It Does:
Just what every well-dressed gangster needs. Wear this with a tie or over a turtleneck, and no one will ever know you’re actually wearing a bulletproof garment. Main features: removable bulletproof pads made of “an ultrahigh-molecular-weight extended chain polyethylene fabric for superior bullet-stopping power.”

The Invention:
Self-Dusting Insecticide Boot Attachment

What It Does:
Like a flea collar for people, only you wear it around your boot, not around your neck. It’s supposed to prevent ticks and other crawling insects from creeping up your leg.

The Invention:
Tool for Imprinting on Hot Dogs

What It Does:
No home should be without one. This amazing invention is actually a branding iron for imprinting messages on hot dogs (“Happy Birthday to Frank”).

The Invention:
Flushable Vehicle Spittoon

What It Does:
Designed for use in a car or truck, this device is for anyone who likes to drive and spit at the same time. Mount the cylindrical receptacle anywhere on the dashboard with a convenient
Velcro tab. Your “fluids” flow into the funnel-shaped bottom of the spittoon, out a drainage tube, and onto the ground under the car. Then flip a switch and windshield washer fluid is automatically pumped to a spray nozzle that rinses the interior of the spittoon receptacle. You’re ready to start spitting again.

Thomas Jefferson invented a coding device called the “wheel cipher.” It’s still used by the U.S. Navy.

The Invention:
Life Expectancy Timepiece

What It Does:
It looks like a watch and you wear it like a watch, but this timepiece actually displays the approximate time remaining in your life. The wearer determines his or her own life expectancy by referring to a combination of actuarial and health factor tables. How much time do you have left? Just check your watch.

The Invention:
Toilet Seat Clock

What It Does:
These days people like to know the time every minute of the day, even when they’re in the bathroom. But where do you put a clock in the bathroom? This waterproof digital clock is mounted in the front of a U-shaped toilet seat. And the seat cover has a rectangular cutout, so the clock can be seen even when the lid is down. The clock can be reversed, so you can read it either sitting on the seat, or standing facing the toilet.

The Invention:
Electrofishing Pole

What It Does:
For the modern fisherman, this device is an electrified stainless-steel loop with an insulated fiberglass handle. The user wears a battery-backpack, which is connected to the loop and has another wire in the water, completing the electrical circuit. When a fish swims within the electric field created by the electrodes, ZAP! The fish quickly loses consciousness and can be easily plucked from the water. We recommend using rubber gloves.

The Invention:
Electrified Tablecloth

What It Does:
Plagued by picnic pests? This tablecloth has a pair of built-in electrical strips, powered by a 9-volt DC battery. An insect trying to cross the strips will get an electrical shock strong enough to discourage further travel across the table, making the world safe for potato salad. Good news: The strips are not strong enough to shock a person who accidentally touches them.

One day, Mrs. Uncle John came home from walking the dog and insisted she had seen small fish all over the ground. Raining fish? Uncle John had to see it for himself. It was true (he still has one in the freezer). Well, after reading this list compiled by David Wallachinsky in the
Book of Lists,
raining fish seems tame.

1
HAY

A great cloud of hay drifted over the town of Devizes, England, on July 3, 1977, and fell to Earth in handful-size lumps. The sky was otherwise clear and cloudless with a slight breeze. The temperature was 26°C (about 79°F).

When yellow-colored globules fell over suburban Sydney, Australia, in late 1971, the minister for health, Mr. Jago, blamed it on the excreta of bees, consisting mostly of undigested pollen. However, there were no reports of vast hordes of bees in the area and no explanation as to why they would choose to excrete en masse over Sydney.

On May 5, 1786, after six months of drought, a strong east wind dropped a great quantity of black eggs on the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Some of the eggs were preserved in water and hatched the next day. The beings inside shed several layers of skin and resembled tadpoles.

The famous Kentucky meat shower took place in southern Bath County on Friday, March 3, 1876. Mrs. Allen Crouch was in her yard making soap when pieces of fresh meat the size of large snowflakes began to fall from the cloudless sky. Two gentlemen who tasted it said that it was either mutton or venison. Scientists
who examined the material found the first samples to be lung tissue from either a human infant or a horse. Other later samples were identified as cartilage and striated muscle fibers. The local explanation was that a flock of buzzards had disgorged as a group while flying overhead.

Mosquitoes are attracted to the color blue.

The largest meteorite fall in recorded history occurred on March 8, 1976, near the Chinese city of Jilin. Many of the 100 stones that were found weighed over 200 pounds; the largest, which landed in the Haupi Commune, weighed over 3,902 pounds. It is, by more than 1,000 pounds, the largest stone meteorite ever recovered.

On October 8, 1976, a light plane buzzed the Piazza Venezia in Rome and dropped 500-lire, 1,000-lire, and 10,000-lire banknotes on the startled people below. The mad bomber was not found.

A fine blanket of soot landed on a Cranford park on the edge of London’s Heathrow Airport in 1969, greatly annoying the local park keepers. The official report of the Greater London Council said the “soot” was composed of spores of a black microfungus,
Pithomyces chartarum,
found only in New Zealand.

A 25-pound chunk of green ice fell from the sky on April 23, 1978, and landed with a roar and a cloud of smoke near an unused school building in Ripley, Tennessee. The Federal Aviation Administration claimed the green blob was frozen waste from a leaky airplane toilet. These falling blobs are unfortunately quite common, and Denver, Colorado, is the center of such phenomena. At least two Denver families have had ice bombs crash through their roofs. And then there’s the story of the unfortunate Kentucky farmer who took a big lick of a flying Popsicle before he discovered what it was.