Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (75 page)

True Story:
What is it about Pennsylvanians? In July 2001, Taviani planted toilets on the lawns in front of three rental properties he owns in Bath. Two were stolen immediately; one, at last report, is still there. Why toilets? “When you think of Bath, you think of a bathroom,” Taviani explains. “Tubs were too big.”

Who was the first president to act in movies? Teddy Roosevelt starred as himself in a 1908 comedy.

Honoree:
Alberoni, a “low-born, clever opportunist” who worked for the bishop of Parma, Italy, in the late 1700s

Notable Achievement:
Promoting himself using bathroom diplomacy

True Story:
One of the French king’s most obnoxious underlings was the Duc de Vendôme; he was notorious for conducting business while seated on the pot and “offering visitors a view of his backside as he got up to wipe himself.” Most people had to put up with this rude treatment, but the bishop of Parma refused and sent Alberoni as his potty-proxy.

Where others saw only a French moon, Alberoni saw opportunity. “Upon seeing this spectacle,” Barbara Kelatsas writes in
Inside the Pastilles of the Marquis
de
Sade,
“Alberoni exclaimed, ‘O!
culo de angelo!’
and rushed to embrace the ducal posterior. This worshipful attitude, and his ability to make good cheese soups, enabled him to attach himself to the Duc de Vendôme and make his fortune.”

Honoree:
Irene Smith, a member of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen in Missouri

Notable Achievement:
Taking care of business…while taking care of business

True Story:
In July 2001, Smith and three other lawmakers were staging a filibuster over a redistricting plan that they felt would hurt their constituents. Smith had to go to the bathroom, but the president of the board told her that if she left the room for any reason, she would lose the floor and her filibuster would end. Rather than abandon her cause, Smith held out for 40 minutes; then, when she couldn’t put off nature’s call any longer, “her aides surrounded her with a sheet, tablecloth, and quilt while she appeared to use a trash can to relieve herself,” according to one account. “What I did behind that tablecloth was my business,” she explained afterward.

No word on whether Smith won her redistricting fight, but she certainly won the day—the Board of Aldermen adjourned without voting on the controversial plan…but not without condemning Smith. “The people in Missouri must think we’re a bunch of morons,” Mayor Francis Slay told reporters.

Howdy neighbor: 72% of Americans don’t know the people who live next door.

More proof that truth really is stranger than fiction.

“A Denver woman has filed for divorce after finding out her husband of seven years had been faking being deaf and mute. In recently-filed court papers, Bill Drimland admitted to the ruse to escape what he called ‘incessant nagging’ from his wife.”

—
Bizarre News

“A Pennsylvania couple woke up to find a strange intruder in their home. A deer had run into the house and into the bathroom, somehow managing to turn on the water and knock over a bottle of bubble bath. He then submerged himself in the frothy water. The Becks called state the Game Warden, who arrived with tranquilizers. ‘The guy said: “There’s nothing wrong. He’s just in there taking a bubble bath,”’ said Beck. The animal was subdued, removed from the house and released back into the wild.”

—
Ananova.com

“Many Nigerians hold to the belief that people can be turned into animals and vice versa. Over the last two years, Nigerian newspapers have covered many such incidents, including the turning of two children into dogs, the turning of a vulture into a man, and the turning of a schoolboy into a yam.”

—
Discovery News

“In Australia, a man named Rob Banks, who was convicted of robbing banks, has been given a new trial because the judge said the jury may have been swayed by his name. This time he will be tried under an alias.”

—“The Edge,”
The Oregonian

It would take 27,000 spider webs to produce a single pound of spider silk.

“Irish hospital worker Willie Nugent decided he would raise money for charity by swimming across a river in downtown Dublin. There was only one problem: Nugent can’t swim. So instead he crawled across a bridge, in movements ‘resembling a breast stroke.’ ”

—
Universal Press Syndicate

“A farmer in India has been charged with manslaughter after allegedly killing a police officer with his rancid breath. While attempting to arrest Raji Bhattachara of Bhopal, the officer smelled the curry on the farmer’s breath and died from an asthma attack.”

—
Maxim
magazine

“After being charged £20 for a £10 overdraft, 30-year-old Michael Howard of Leeds legally changed his name to “Yorkshire Bank are Fascist Bastards.” The bank has now asked him to close his account. Mr. Bastards has asked them to repay his 69-pence balance by check made out in his new name.”

—
Manchester Guardian

“Kathy Szarko, the artist who created the 6-foot-tall Mr. Potato Head as a symbol for Rhode Island’s tourism campaign, was upset after it was removed…for being racist because it was brown. ‘He’s a potato,’ she said. ‘That’s why he’s brown.’ ”

—
Universal Press Syndicate

“Last week it became legal for Kentucky ministers to pack heat inside a house of worship, as long as they have a concealed weapons permit. Not all religious officials agree with the change. ‘A friend of mine said it, and I’m going to repeat it,’ said the Rev. Nancy Jo Kemper, ‘Jesus would puke.’ ”

—
Wacky News

Can’t confirm or deny. The CIA once called an assassination team the “Health Alteration Committee.”

Life, as a series of possibilities.

are brushing your hair, it’s best to stop after about the 25th stroke. That’s the right number for the best distribution of your hair’s natural oils. Much more brushing than that can cause damage.

have hair growing out of your armpit, you’ve got
hirci.
That’s the fancy word for armpit hair.

are stuck in the grip of a crocodile’s jaw, jam your thumbs in its eyeballs. (Good luck.)

get a “mustache” from drinking grape or cherry juice, you can quickly wipe it off with a bit of toothpaste dabbed on a washcloth.

are an average American, your butt is 15 inches long.

sneeze your most powerful sneeze, it’ll come flying out of your face at a little more than 100 mph.

have to choose between total lack of sleep or food for the next 10 days, go with lack of food. You’ll die from total lack of sleep sooner (in about 10 days) than from starvation (a few weeks).

are the electrician in charge of the lighting on a movie or TV set, you’re a “gaffer.” If you’re an assistant to the gaffer, you’re known as the “best boy.”

weigh 120 pounds on Earth, you’d weigh about 20 pounds on the moon.

listen to a cricket chirp, you can figure out the temperature. Count the number of chirps per 15 seconds and add 40. That’ll give you the temperature (Fahrenheit).

are trying to find a tiny object on the floor, put a bare light at floor level. The light will cause the object to cast a shadow, making it easier to spot.

A freshly hatched crocodile is 3 times longer than the egg from which it emerged.

In this installment of our history of photography, we tell you about the man who is to photography what Colonel Sanders is to fried chicken: George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak.

On November 13, 1877, a 23-year-old bank clerk named George Eastman walked into a camera store in Rochester, New York, and paid $49.58 for a camera and some equipment. Eastman bought only the essentials, but in those days “the essentials” included a tripod, glass plates, a plate holder, containers of photographic chemicals, and more than a dozen other items, including a tent to serve as a darkroom.

Eastman took his camera with him on a trip to Mackinac Island in Lake Huron, where he photographed some of the local sights. But as fascinated as he was by photography, he loathed the amount of equipment that was required. “It seemed,” he said, “that one ought to be able to carry less than a pack-horse load.”

Eastman began to experiment to see if he could simplify the process. He bought a subscription to the
British Journal of Photography,
and by chance his first issue was the one reporting Charles Harper Bennett’s perfection of the gelatin dry-plate process. The article prompted him to abandon the collodion “wet process” and start making his own gelatin plates.

“The English article started me in the right direction,” he wrote. “At first I wanted to make photography simpler merely for my own convenience, but soon I thought of the possibilities of commercial production.”

Like most other commercial plate makers, Eastman started out making them one at a time. He heated chemicals in an old teakettle, poured them over glass plates, then smoothed out the emulsion with a rod. It was a cumbersome, time-consuming process, and that made precoated plates expensive. Eventually, Eastman invented a machine to coat gelatin plates automatically, then, in April 1880, started manufacturing them to sell to local photographers and photo supply stores.

The 1953 film The Moon
Is Blue
was condemned by the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency because it contained the words “mistress” and “virgin.”

The Eastman Dry-Plate Company grew rapidly on the strength of gelatin plate sales, but that didn’t stop Eastman from introducing a product in 1884 that he believed would make glass plates obsolete: it was a roll of photosensitive paper, or “film,” that could be used
instead
of glass plates. Eastman sold this film in a box that could be attached to existing cameras, in place of the box that held the glass plates.

Using glass plates, photographers could take at most a few shots before having to reload the camera, which usually required a darkroom; with Eastman’s roll film there was enough paper for 50. Added bonus: Roll film wasn’t heavy. “It weighs two and three-quarters pounds,” Eastman explained. “A corresponding amount of glass plates and holders would weigh fifty pounds.”

Eastman’s new film seemed such an obvious improvement over glass plates that he believed it would take the photographic world by storm. He was wrong: Professional photographers had too much money invested in glass-plate technology. Besides, glass plates made negatives as large as 20 by 24 inches, which captured an incredible amount of detail and produced beautiful photographs. Eastman’s film couldn’t duplicate the quality.

At first Eastman tried to adjust his product line to accommodate the needs of professional photographers, but he soon realized that this was exactly the opposite of what he should be doing. And that was when he changed photography forever.

“When we started out with our scheme of film photography,” he recalled in 1913, “we expected that everybody who used glass plates would take up films, but we found that in order to make a large business we would have to reach the general public.”

Eastman was one of the first people to understand that the number of people who wanted to take pictures was potentially much larger than the number of those who were interested in developing their own film. He realized that if he was the first person to patent a complete and simple camera “system” that anyone could use, he would have that market all to himself.

In 1888, Eastman patented what he described as a “little roll holder breast camera,” so called because the user held it against their chest to take a picture. But what would he call it? He wanted the name of his camera to begin and end with the letter K—he thought it a “strong and incisive” letter—and to be easy to pronounce in any language. He made up a word: Kodak.

Just as Eastman intended, his camera was easy to use: The photographer simply pulled a string to set the shutter, pointed the camera at the subject, pushed a button to take the picture, then turned a key to advance the film. The user didn’t even have to focus: the lens was designed so that anything more than six feet away was always in focus. Price: $25—a lot of money in those days, but half what Eastman had paid for his first camera equipment 11 years earlier.