Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (7 page)

Excerpts
from real student essays and quiz answers:

• On April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assassinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.

• George Washington married Martha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. The Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

• One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea.

• Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote
Donkey Hote.
The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote
Paradise Lost.
Then his wife died and he wrote
Paradise Regained.

It flows like a river, it flies when you’re having fun, and it waits for no man… but what do we really know about time? Read on to find out.

Ben Franklin did. In 1784 he wrote an essay suggesting that setting clocks ahead in the spring and behind in the fall would be a wise idea because it would save expensive candles. But the idea wasn’t taken seriously until 1907 when a British builder named William Willett was riding through the countryside early one morning and noticed that in spite of the full daylight, all the cottages’ curtains were still drawn. It was a waste of daylight, he thought, and he wrote a pamphlet advocating that the nation set its clocks ahead by 20-minute increments on each of the four Sundays in April, and set them back on the four Sundays in October. A bill introduced in Parliament in 1909 was roundly ridiculed, but the advent of World War I brought a dire need to conserve coal, so the British Summer Time Act was passed in 1916. It set the time ahead one hour in the spring and back one hour in the fall.

The United States followed suit and enacted Daylight Saving Time in 1918 to conserve fuel for the war effort, but the measure was so unpopular that it was repealed in 1919. It was reinstated during World War II, again to conserve fuel, but when the war ended, some localities opted to continue observing it and some didn’t. And those that did couldn’t agree on when to set their clocks forward and back. On a single 35-mile stretch of highway between West Virginia and Ohio, for example, a traveler could pass through no less than seven time changes. Confusion reigned.

The transportation industry, led by the Greyhound Bus Company, lobbied hard to remedy the situation, and finally in 1966 Congress passed the Uniform Time Act. The law didn’t make Daylight Saving Time mandatory, but said that individual states needed to observe it or not on a uniform basis.

Daylight Saving Time is now observed in about 70 countries around the world.

In 1992 Barbie came out with her own exercise video.

Note:
It’s singular, not plural—it’s Daylight Saving, not Daylight Savings. Why? We’re saving daylight. According to the Department of Transportation, the United States saves about 1% of its energy every day DST is in effect. Maybe that makes it worth the effort for Americans to change three billion timepieces twice a year.

WHY ARE THERE 24 HOURS IN A DAY?

The standard started with the ancient Sumerians, who also invented the first known system of writing. Their mathematical system was based on the number 12, just as ours is based on the number 10. The Sumerians, it is surmised, counted not the 10 digits of the hands, but the 12 segments of the 4 fingers on each hand. Twelve was considered a magical number because it is the lowest number with the greatest number of divisors—it is easily split into half or thirds or quarters or sixths, whereas 10 can only be cut in half or into fifths.

Their systems of weights, measures, and money were all based on 12, and so was their system of time. It was the Sumerians who first divided the day into 12 parts, with each segment equal to 2 of our hours. Later, the Egyptians modified the system by dividing the day into 24 segments. And in case you were wondering, the Babylonians are responsible for our current system of having 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute.

You can thank the railroads for this one. Before the transcontinental railroads, there were no time zones. Noon in any city was whenever the sun reached the meridian of that particular place. Time actually varied by one minute for every 13 miles traveled, and cities only a few hundred miles apart had times that were different, which made scheduling trains very difficult. For example, when it was noon in Chicago, it was 12:31 in Pittsburgh, 12:17 in Toledo, 11:50 in St. Louis, and 11:27 in Omaha. At one time, U.S. railroads had nearly 300 different time zones. This lack of consistency wasn’t just inconvenient, it was dangerous. The possibility of train wrecks increased dramatically by the conflicting schedules. Something had to be done—not locally—but on a global basis.

By 1847 Great Britain had a unified time system, which meant they had a single time zone across the entire country. That was fine for the small island nation. But it wasn’t as easy in North America—the United States and Canada cover some 60 degrees of longitude.

Dogs of War: Versatility Ltd. of Dorset, England, manufactures bulletproof vests for dogs.

In 1872 the Time-Table Convention was founded in St. Louis to look for a solution. Charles Dowd, a school principal from New York, recommended that the U.S. set up standard time zones, and brought his idea to Congress. Most lawmakers agreed with the idea, but were afraid it would upset their constituents, so the bill was stalled on the House floor for more than a decade.

It wasn’t until Sir Sanford Fleming, a well-respected Canadian Railroad engineer, brought a specific solution to Washington that the idea began to take hold. His idea: because there are 24 hours in a day, divide the Earth’s 360 degrees by 24, which will create 24 equal time zones separated by 15 degrees.

In 1882 the Standard Time system was finally adopted, officially dividing the United States into four time zones—Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. At noon on Sunday, November 18, 1883—a day that became known as “the day with two noons”—the railroads set their clocks to this system.

On October 13, 1884, leaders from 25 nations gathered at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., divided the world into 24 time zones, with Greenwich, England, chosen to be the “prime meridian”. The day would begin there and time would change by one hour for each 15 degrees traveled from that point.

Slowly but surely the rest of the world adapted to the new time zones. Some applauded it, others rejected it—but because the railroads were
the
primary means of transportation and shipping at the time, people had little choice.

Still, it wasn’t until 1918 that Congress got around to making the Standard Time Act a matter of law—a law made, coincidentally, in conjunction with passing the first Daylight Saving Time Act.

“We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.”

—
H.G. Wells

Tall tale: 25% of American men are now six feet or taller, compared to only 4% in 1900.

Mrs. Uncle John insists that women don’t read in the bathroom we might believe her… if we didn’t get so many letters from women who do. In their honor, here’s a bit of forgotten political history.

F
irst Lady:
Lucy Ware Webb Hayes, wife of Rutherford B. Hayes

Notable First:
The first First Lady to be called a First Lady

Background:
From Martha Washington through Julie Grant, presidential wives did not have a title. In 1876, newspaper writer Mary Clemmer Ames first referred to Mrs. Hayes, wife of the 19th president, as “the First Lady” in her column, “Woman’s Letter from Washington.”

First Lady:
Frances Folsom Cleveland, wife of Grover Cleveland

Notable First:
The first First Lady to be married in the White House

Background:
Frances Folsom was only 21 when she married 49-year-old President Cleveland on June 2, 1886. It was the first nuptial ceremony held in the White House for a presidential couple. Mrs. Cleveland was the nation’s youngest First Lady. She was also the first First Lady to give birth to a child in the White House, when her daughter Esther was born in 1893.

First Lady:
Letitia Christian Tyler, first wife of John Tyler

Notable First:
The first First Lady to die in the White House

Background:
John Tyler became president when President William Henry Harrison died 30 days after being sworn in. Letitia Tyler had suffered a paralytic stroke several years earlier, so her duties as First Lady were actually assigned to her daughter-in-law, Priscilla Cooper Tyler. After a lengthy illness, probably tuberculosis, Letitia died in September 1842.

First Lady:
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, wife of John F. Kennedy

Notable First:
The first (and only) First Lady to receive an Emmy Award

Background:
To prod Congress into passing a bill giving permanent museum status to the White House, she conducted a tour of the mansion for television, which earned her a Special Emmy.

Marlene Dietrich’s beauty secret: to emphasize her

First Lady:
Helen Herron Taft, wife of William H. Taft

Notable First:
The first First Lady to decree that no bald-headed waiter or butler could serve in the White House

Background:
Feeling the previous occupants of the White House were too informal and lacked dignity, Helen Taft, wife of the 27th president, thought this rule would create a favorable impression for guests. (Not to be confused with Lou Henry Hoover, wife of the 31st president, who insisted that all butlers, waiters, and footmen must be exactly five feet, eight inches tall.)

First Lady:
Eliza McCardle Johnson, wife of Andrew Johnson

Notable First:
The first First Lady to teach her husband to read and write (before he was president)

Background:
President Andrew Johnson was born into poverty. Apprenticed to a tailor at a young age, he never spent a single day in school in his entire life. In 1827, the 19-year-old tailor married 16-year-old Eliza McCardle. Every night, after supper, Mrs. Johnson taught her husband how to read and write.

First Lady:
Patricia Ryan Nixon, wife of Richard M. Nixon

Notable First:
The first First Lady to visit an overseas combat zone

Background:
“Visit” may be a slight overstatement. During the Nixons’ 1969 trip to South Vietnam, Pat Nixon flew over the troops in an open helicopter.

First Lady:
Florence Kling Harding, wife of Warren G. Harding

Notable First:
The first First Lady to vote

Background:
Women were granted the right to vote in August of 1920—perfect timing for Florence Harding, a strong supporter of Women’s Suffrage. A couple of months later she cast her first ballot (presumably) for her husband Warren, who won the election by a landslide.

high cheekbones, she had her upper molars removed.

You’d be surprised how many times lawnmowers find their way into the news for one reason or another. Here’s just a few of the “clippings” that we’ve collected over the years.

In 2000 the German garden equipment maker Wolf-Garten introduced a prototype of the first mower in the world that cuts grass using lasers instead of blades. Called the Zero, the mower uses a computer-guided array of four powerful lasers capable of cutting grass to an accuracy of one millimeter. And that’s only the beginning—a stream of air then mixes the zapped blades with fertilizer before dumping them back on the lawn. The mower comes complete with a leather seat, CD player, and even Internet access. Estimated retail price when the commercial model hits the market in 2002: $30,000.