Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (41 page)

Please do not honk—driver sleeping

Back off! I’m not that kind of car

A woman’s place is in the House—
and the Senate!

PROUD MEMBER OF
PETA: P
EOPLE
E
ATING
T
ASTY
A
NIMALS

Heart Attacks:
God’s revenge for eating his animal friends

Okay, who put a “stop payment” on my reality check?

The IRS: We’ve got what it takes to take what you’ve got!

GROW YOUR OWN DOPE—PLANT A MAN

Some people just don’t know how to drive. I call these people “everybody but me.”

C
HAOS
. P
ANIC
. D
ISORDER
.

Q: Where does singer and songwriter Stevie Nicks do most of her writing? A: Where else? In the bathroom.

HOW PAPER BECAME MONEY, PART II

For most of history, people felt that gold and silver were “real” money and that paper money was worthless. (If you feel that way, too, please take all the worthless paper money you can find and mail it to Uncle John at the address listed in the back of this book.) Here’s how paper money became established in Western civilization. (Part I of the story is on
page 47
.
)

M
Y MONEY OR YOUR LIFE

The concept of paper money originated in China as early as 140 B.C. But it wasn’t until the late 1200s, when the Italian traveler Marco Polo wrote about it in his memoirs, that the idea was introduced to Europe.

So did paper money catch on in Europe soon after that? Not a chance—in China despots like Kublai Khan were quick to kill anyone who refused to accept the notes. Under that kind of pressure, paper money caught on fast.

In Europe things were different. Sure, there were plenty of European tyrants, but none of them tried to force paper money on their subjects the way Kublai Khan did. Paper notes had to earn their way into the public’s confidence, via a very gradual process of evolution. Here’s how it happened.

DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT THEM

Many travelers use
traveler’s checks
instead of cash. Merchants all over the world accept them just as if they were cash, yet they have no value to thieves because once they’re reported stolen, they can’t be used. The traveler gets a new book of checks and the thief ends up with nothing.

It turns out there was a way to avoid traveling with cash even before traveler’s checks were invented. As far back as the Middle Ages, when people went on business trips they could deposit gold coins or other valuables with a trusted merchant—frequently a jeweler, or
goldsmith
—when they traveled outside of their home town. The traveler carried a note from the goldsmith that stated how much money had been left on deposit and promised to release the gold to anyone who presented the note for payment of a debt, provided that 1) the traveler had signed the note over to the debtor by name, and 2) he had endorsed it with his signature.

SAFE AT HOME

If the goldsmith was well known and trusted, this note was literally as good as gold. If the note was stolen, it didn’t matter, because the gold was still safely locked in the goldsmith’s vault and would not be released without the owner’s signature. These early “promissory notes,” as they came to be called, were the forerunners of modern banknotes.

Goldsmiths soon realized that people tended to deposit more money than they withdrew, and that the difference could be lent out temporarily to borrowers who agreed to repay the money with interest. Storing gold and other valuables, lending money, and other services (such as exchanging foreign coins) proved to be so lucrative that by the mid-1600s, some goldsmiths had gotten out of the goldsmithing business altogether, focusing exclusively on financial services. They were the first modern bankers.

MAKING CHANGE

At first each promissory note was unique and read something like, “John Cooper has deposited 20 pounds, 6 shillings, and 10 pence and promises to pay any debts he incurs out of these funds.” But by the late 1600s, the volume of transactions had increased over the years and goldsmith bankers found that it was much easier to issue standardized notes in nice round amounts like £100, £50, £20, £10, £5, and £1. So instead of getting one note for exactly 20 pounds, 6 shillings, and 10 pence, John Cooper would get one note for 20 pounds, another for 5 shillings, another for 1 shilling, and would probably have to carry the 10 pence (similar to a dime) in cash.

These standardized “banknotes” were made payable to the bearer and no longer required the traveler to endorse it with his signature. This made banknotes more convenient. But if you wanted the security of a signature, there was another new invention: checks.

PASS IT ON

Standardized banknotes were used as money, but they were still thought of as receipts, having no intrinsic value in themselves. Merchants accepted the notes as payment and then went to the bank, claimed the gold, and brought it home for safekeeping.

Official state dessert of Massachusetts: Boston Cream Pie.

But what happened when
this
person wanted to take a trip? He had to gather up his gold and trudge right back to the bank and exchange it for banknotes all over again. Why even bother? As people came to trust the banknotes more and more, they stopped redeeming them for gold. They just traded the banknotes. A single banknote might pass from person to person to person for months or even years before being redeemed for gold.

There would be some more fine-tuning to produce the bills we use today (that story is in
Uncle John’s Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader
), but for all intents and purposes…paper currency had arrived.

FOOTNOTE

So you can take paper money down to your local bank or to the U.S. Treasury and redeem it for gold, right?

Wrong. At one time, the U.S. government pegged the value of a dollar to a fixed amount of gold (the gold standard). In 1933, for example, the value of $1 was set at exactly 1/35 of one ounce of gold. But that year the federal government began easing away from the gold standard, in the hope that it might help end the Great Depression (it didn’t). The government continued to define the value of the dollar in terms of gold but outlawed the circulation of gold coins. Until 1933 there were six denominations of U.S. gold coins: $1, $2.50 (quarter eagle), $3, $5 (half eagle), $10 (eagle), and $20 (double eagle).

In 1971 the government took another step away from the gold standard when it stopped the free exchange of U.S. gold for foreign-owned U.S. dollars, which was depleting U.S. gold reserves.

Finally, in 1978, Congress removed the dollar from the gold standard entirely. You can still
buy
gold with dollars, but you can’t
redeem
dollars for gold. The amount of gold that a single dollar can buy changes all the time, and that’s true of all the major currencies of the world. Governments today don’t want their economies directly tied to the price of any commodity—including gold.

Life expectancy for men in the U.S.: In 1900, 46.6 years; in 2000, 72.7 years. Life expectancy for women in the U.S.: In 1900, 48.7 years; in 2000, 76.1 years.

SAM’S BRAINTEASERS

BRI members are always asking for more of these tricky questions. We aim to please. Think you can figure them out? (Answers on
page 499
.
)

1.
Mr. Red, Mr. White, and Mr. Blue met at a coffee shop. One man was wearing a red suit, one a white suit, and the other a blue suit. After a short while, Mr. White exclaimed, “Why, I just noticed that none of us is dressed in the same color as his own last name.”

“Really?” remarked the man in the red suit. “So?”

Can you figure out what color suit each man is wearing?

2.
What do the following words have in common? (It’s really not that difficult if you chip away at them for a while.)

Sheath Pirate Ashamed Brandy

3.
Mr. Tidball purchased two clocks from Gordo’s Repair Shop and set them at the same time. He soon discovered, however, that one clock was two minutes slow per hour and the other was one minute fast per hour. The next time Tidball looked, one clock was exactly an hour ahead of the other. How long had it been since he last set the clocks?

4.
Uncle John’s cousin, “Bozo” Newman, was about to board a city bus with his newly purchased, five-foot-long novelty toothbrush, when the bus driver informed him of a city ordinance prohibiting packages more than four feet tall. Bozo only had enough money to take the bus home so he tried returning the toothbrush—but the store wouldn’t take returns. Five minutes later, Bozo was on the bus riding home…with the big toothbrush in one piece.

How’d he do it?

5.
Uncle John was in the “reading room” when he came across a word puzzle in the daily newspaper. After some active thinking, he solved it. Can you? It read, “Which is the odd word out and why?” Here’s the word list:

Brush Taste Shampoo Stench Flush Wash Seat

6.
What’s the closest relation the son of your father’s brother’s sister-in-law could be to you?

7.
A long time ago in a faraway land, there lived a queen called Bubbles and her gorgeous daughter, Princess Porcelain. The princess wished to be married, but Queen Bubbles would not allow it—she never wanted Porcelain to leave the throne room.

So Bubbles devised a scheme to rid the palace of suitors. All a suitor had to do to win Porcelain’s hand was to draw a piece of paper from a golden bowl. But there was a catch: there were two pieces of paper in the bowl. One said “My Child,” resulting in marriage to the princess, while the other said “The Snakes,” which meant the suitor would be thrown into a pit of venomous snakes, never to be seen again. Somehow, the suitors always seemed to end up in the snake pit.

One day a handsome knight named Sir Flushalot came along and Porcelain fell head over heels for him. The princess pulled him aside and whispered, “I think my mother is a cheat. I believe both pieces of paper say ‘The Snakes.’” Flushalot assessed the situation and said, “Fear not—I’ve got a plan.” Aware that he cannot expose the queen as a cheater, how does Sir Flushalot win Princess Porcelain’s hand in marriage?

*        *        *

ANOTHER LUCKY FIND

The Find:
A Victorian masterpiece painting

Where It Was Found:
In a Colorado building

The Story:
In the 1960s, a man (he refused to release his name to the media) bought a building in Colorado. Inside the building was a painting, signed “Waterhouse,” depicting a sultry Cleopatra reclining on a chair. He thought it was “pretty and rather sexy.” Nearly 40 years later he heard about a “Waterhouse” being sold for millions of dollars, so he called Christie’s and sent a photo. Christie’s senior director, Martin Beisly, immediately flew from London to Colorado and confirmed that it was a painting that hadn’t been heard of since 1889. “Scholars knew about the picture,” he said, “but had no idea where it was and even thought it might have been destroyed.” Estimated worth: $900,000.

Toys “R” Us was originally called the “Children’s Supermart.”

WISE WOMEN

Some thoughtful observations from the stronger sex.

“You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.”

—
Oprah Winfrey

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’”

—
Erma Bombeck

“The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he’s a baby.”

—
Natalie Wood

“If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can’t, you’re right.”

—
Mary Kay Ash

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”

—
Beverly Sills

“I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door—or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter what.”

—
Joan Rivers

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.”

—
Maya Angelou

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”

—
Eleanor Roosevelt

“The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances.”

—
Martha Washington

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you till it seems you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then—for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”

—
Harriet Beecher Stowe

“Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.”

—
Isak Dinesen

Sheryl Crow’s two front teeth are fake—the real ones got knocked out when she tripped onstage.

(B)AD PROMOTIONS

When a company comes up with a sales promotion, the idea is to attract potential customers and make a bunch of money. But sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.