Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (35 page)

Claim to Fame:
The place where Elvis recorded his very first single, “That’s All Right,” on July 5, 1954.

LAS VEGAS HILTON

Address:
3000 S. Paradise Rd. (Elvis usually stayed in the Presidential Suite on the 30th floor.)

Claim to Fame:
Elvis was notorious for shooting appliances, TVs (especially if Robert Goulet was on), and just about anything else. In 1974 he squeezed off a round at a light switch in the Presidential Suite and nearly hit his girlfriend, Linda Thompson. After that Elvis changed the rules. “We’re in the penthouse,” he reminded his entourage, “nobody’s gonna get hit as long as you shoot straight up.”

MARKET SQUARE ARENA

Address:
300 East Market St., Indianapolis, Indiana

What do Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern have in common? Both were born on January 12.

Claim to Fame:
Site of Elvis’s last concert, on June 26, 1977. He died less than two months later, on August 16. The arena has since been torn down and replaced by a parking lot.

OFFICE OF DR. GEORGE NICHOPOULOS

Address:
6027 Walnut Grove Rd., Memphis, Tennessee

Claim to Fame:
“Dr. Nick” prescribed the King more than 5,300 pills in the last seven months of his life. In 1980 Nichopoulos went on trial for overprescribing drugs to himself, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and eight other people. He was acquitted.

BAPTIST MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

Address:
899 Madison Ave., Memphis, Tennessee

Claim to Fame:
The place where Elvis went in 1973, 1975, and 1977 to wean himself from the pills that were prescribed by Dr. Nick.

HARDING’S GROCERY

Address:
120 West Prairie, Vicksburg, Michigan (now Felpausch’s)

Claim to Fame:
The place where housewife Louise Welling, 51, claims she saw Elvis—
alive!—
in September 1988, 11 years after his death. “He was dressed in a white jumpsuit,” she says. “He’d lost weight, and he didn’t have sideburns. He bought a fuse.”

J.C. PENNEY

Address:
Crossroads Mall in Kalamazoo, Michigan

Claim to Fame:
Where Welling says she saw Elvis a second time, in November 1988. She doesn’t know what he was buying at Penney’s, or even if he shopped there. He may have just been passing through on his way to another store in the mall.

COLUMBIA PLAZA HOTEL

Address:
305 East Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, Michigan

Claim to Fame:
Elvis’s Kalamazoo hideway, according to Mrs. Welling. After so many sightings in one town, she figured he must be living there, so she traced him to the hotel. He was registered under one of his favorite pseudonyms: John Burrows.

World’s largest harbor: Rotterdam Harbor in the Netherlands.

CAT TALES

Legends of cats with mysterious powers have been told for thousands of years. Nearly every culture has at least one. Here is some feline folklore that’s been passed down over the centuries.

G
RIMALKIN.
Its name comes from its color,
gray
, plus
malkin
, an archaic word for cat. Scottish legend tells of this wraith, a human by day, a fierce wild panther roaming the Highlands by night. The huge gray cat has magical powers: it can also appear in the form of a hare and can disappear at will. During the Middle Ages, the name grimalkin—and cats in general—became associated with the devil and witchcraft. Women tried as witches during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries were often accused of having a “familiar,” a devilish companion animal. What kind of animal? Usually a grimalkin.

JAGUAR SUN.
The Mayans of Central America worshiped the Jaguar Sun that rose each day in the east and journeyed west. After the sun set, the cat god would have to fight lords of the underworld all night. But he would win the battle and rise again in the morning. Warriors wore jaguar skins to help them in battle; shamans were said to be able to shape-shift into the big cats.

MATAGOT.
According to European folklore, matagots are magical cats. The French say that a matagot can be lured home with a plump chicken. Once in the house, treat it well and it will bring good luck. For example, give it the first bite of every meal, and it will reward you with a gold coin each morning. In England, people whispered that Dick Whittington, a humble boy who grew up to become mayor of London in the 15th century, owed his good luck to his matagot.

EL BROOSHA.
The ancient myths of the Sephardic Jews (ancient Hebrews who left Israel and went to what is now Spain and Portugal) tell of Lilith, Adam’s first wife, created before Eve. According to the legend, when Lilith refused to submit to Adam, she was banished from paradise. Lilith still haunts Earth as a demon in the shape of a huge black vampire-cat named El Broosha (or sometimes El Brooja—
bruja
means “witch” in Spanish), who sucks the blood of newborn babies.

At sea level, water boils at 212°F… on top of Mt. Everest, it boils at 150°F.

BAST.
The ancient Egyptians began worshiping this cat-headed goddess more than 5,000 years ago. Her name means “devouring lady” and she was worshiped in temples throughout Egypt—especially on October 31, Bast’s Feast Day. Bast was said to be the daughter of the sun god Ra, and was associated with the moon, music, dancing, motherhood—and violent vengeance. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead she was said to have destroyed the bodies of the deceased with her “royal flame” if they failed entry tests for the underworld. Out of respect for Bast, it became an honor to stage expensive funerals for cats, during which gold and gem-studded cat figurines were buried along with the mummified body of the deceased kitty.

LI SHOU.
Li Shou was a cat goddess worshiped by the ancient Chinese, who believed that at one time cats had the ability to speak, but gave the gift to humans so that they could lay around all day. Li Shou was a fertility goddess who brought rain and protected crops. At harvest time, peasants would hold an orgiastic festival in her honor, offering sacrifices to the cats that had protected the grain from rats and mice.

CAT FACTS

• Some famous Italian paintings of the Last Supper show a cat at the feet of Judas. The fickle cat symbolizes Judas’ role as traitor.

• Charles I ruled England from 1625 to 1649. According to legend, he had a lucky black cat. As civil war ripped the country, Charles became so convinced that his cat kept him safe, he assigned guards to watch it. Strangely enough, only one day after the black cat died, Charles was arrested and eventually sentenced to death by beheading.

• In 1760 a “racy” book called
The Life and Adventures of a Cat
was published in England. The main character was a
ram
cat (as males were known back then), named Tom the Cat. The book was so popular that ever since then, males have been known as
tomcats
.

Zip code 12345 is assigned to General Electric in Schenectady, New York.

EYE OF THE HURRICANE

Hurricanes are the largest, most powerful, most unpredictable, and deadliest phenomena on Earth. (Kind of like Uncle John about an hour after dinner on “bean night”—but that’s another story.
)

W
HAT’S IN A NAME?

Hurricanes, typhoons
, and
cyclones
are the same thing—it just depends on what part of the world you’re from. The word
hurricane
comes from “Hurikan,” the Mayan name for the god of evil. The Mayans believed the Hurikan was a huge winged serpent whose breath could flatten trees and dry up oceans. In the Northwest Pacific, meteorologists use the Chinese word
typhoon
(from
taaifung
, which means “big wind”) for the same kind of weather system. Meteorologists also use the term
cyclone
(from the Greek word for “coil”), especially for smaller hurricanes and typhoons. Cyclone describes the way a hurricane’s wind coils around a low pressure system. (See
page 341
to find out how hurricanes are named.)

HOW THEY’RE BORN

The mother of all hurricanes is the sun. Hurricanes are born when a unique set of circumstances come together in exactly the right order. For a hurricane to form, several conditions must be met:

• First the sun must heat up a large area of tropical ocean where the water temperature is a minimum of 80°F (the 80-degree layer has to be 150 feet deep or the storm will die). Billions of tons of water start to evaporate and rise into the atmosphere.

• The winds coming from different directions have to converge on the rising air, forcing it further upwards.

• As the warm air rises, it meets cooler air above. The moisture in the air mass condenses and turns into heavy rain. The heat energy created during condensation is pumped back into the air mass, making it rise even faster.

• The next step, according to Jack Williams in
The USA Today Weather Book
, is a violent mid-air collision.

The air in such high pressure areas is flowing outward. That helps disperse the air that’s rising in the storm, which creates a semi-vacuum and encourages even more air to rise from the ground. A hurricane’s winds are formed by air near the ocean rushing inward to replace air that’s rising in the storm.

In 1923 President Calvin Coolidge started the annual tradition of the National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony on the White House lawn.

• Result: a huge doughnut-shaped weather system that continues to grow as long as the sun and ocean feed in energy and moisture.

• Finally, the rotation of the earth causes this enormous cloud to spin from a force known as the Coriolis Effect.

Weather in Motion

The Coriolis Effect is named after Gustave Gaspard Coriolis, a 19th-century French scientist who is credited with explaining why Napoleon’s cannon balls always deflected slightly to the right of the targets at which they were fired. The reason, Coriolis determined, is that the rotation of the earth affects objects in motion. The Coriolis Effect gives northbound air masses a counterclockwise spin—and southbound air masses a clockwise spin.

HOW HURRICANES KILL

Over the past 30 years the damage and loss of life from hurricanes has diminished as meteorologists have become better at tracking storms. The hurricane death toll has also decreased, but there are still hundreds of victims every year, sometimes even thousands. Here are the three major ways people die during hurricanes:

Storm surge.
As a hurricane approaches land, the storm’s rushing winds push a wall of water ahead of it like a tank moving forward through a muddy ditch. Some hurricanes are capable of producing a storm surge 15 feet high. This can be extremely hazardous because some of the most densely-populated—and hurricane-prone—parts of the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines are less than 10 feet above sea level.

Coupled with normal tides, a hurricane can create a “storm surge” super-tide which can rise as high as a three-story building. Shoreline communities can be engulfed in a matter of minutes while huge wind-driven waves pound buildings to kindling, and boats, houses, and people are dragged miles out to sea as the surge retreats. In 1900 more than 6,000 people died in Galveston, Texas, when a 15-foot storm surge overwhelmed the entire city. In 1995 a 24-foot storm surge caused $3 billion worth of damage to beachfront property near Pensacola, Florida, although thanks to early warning from meteorologists, no lives were lost.

Moving Air.
Hurricane winds can reach sustained speeds in excess of 150 mph for hours at a time. That’s enough to level most buildings, overturn a bus, and turn virtually any seemingly harmless object into a deadly projectile. But if that isn’t bad enough, tornadoes will often form on the fringes of hurricanes, raising hurricane-related wind speeds to more than 300 mph.

Floods.
As hurricanes come ashore, they almost always encounter cold weather systems on higher ground. Warm humid air colliding with huge masses of cold air causes torrential rainfall. In a matter of hours, millions of tons of water can be deposited over an inland community creating flash floods in places where residents never expect high water. To make matters worse, people often underestimate the power of moving water. They are tempted to wade through a knee deep stream or drive over a flooded bridge, unaware that 18 inches of water moving at 20 mph can sweep away an 18-wheeler. Over the past 30 years, nearly 60% of all hurricane fatalities were caused by inland flooding.

THE NUMBERS

• In an average year, hurricanes cause nearly five billion dollars of damage to the United States.

• The highest storm surge ever recorded was a 42-foot surge in Bathurst Bay, Australia, in 1899.

• The largest amount of rain in less than 12 hours was 45 inches dumped on La Reunion Island by tropical Cyclone Denise in 1966. La Reunion Island is a good place to live if you like rain—it holds five world records for cyclone-induced rain including 97.1 inches over a 48-hour period (unnamed cyclone, 1958) and 223.5 inches over a 10-day period (Cyclone Hyacinthe, 1980).

• What’s the most destructive hurricane of all time? In 1992 Hurricane Andrew damaged or destroyed nearly 100,000 homes and caused $26 billion worth of property damage. But that’s not the record—in 1926 an unnamed hurricane rampaged through Florida and Alabama. If that storm’s damage were measured in today’s dollars, it’s estimated that it would have cost more than $84 billion.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans barbecue year-round.