Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (42 page)

B
rilliant Marketing Idea:
In 1994 Prudential Securities was trying to improve its image, tarnished by allegations that agents had been lying to customers for years. Their $20 million campaign started with a “straight talk” newspaper ad highlighting the honesty of their agents. A full-page photo of real-life Prudential broker Susan B. Gooding featured the caption, “From where I sit, preserving integrity is not a lost art.” Underscoring her integrity, the ad finished with, “One of my clients is my father.”

Oops!
Gooding’s father had been dead since 1991 and, the
Chicago Sun Times
reported, he was never her client. Prudential claimed it was an honest mistake and pulled the ads immediately.

Brilliant Marketing Idea:
In January 2002, CNN ran a TV commercial for news anchor Paula Zahn’s new show,
American Morning
. In it the announcer says, “Where can you find a morning news anchor who’s provocative, super-smart, and oh, yeah, just a little sexy? CNN…Yeah, CNN.” And as he says “sexy,” the word appears on the screen—and the sound of a zipper opening can be heard.

Oops!
CNN was immediately slammed by rival networks for using sex to sell a news broadcast. “It was a major blunder by our promotions department,” said Chairman Walter Isaacson. ” The spot was pulled after being shown only twice.

Brilliant Marketing Idea:
In March 2003, the Hong Kong Tourism Board put their new slogan—“Hong Kong Will Take Your Breath Away”—in ads in several major publications in England.

Oops!
In a bizarre coincidence, just as the ad campaign began, Hong Kong was hit by an outbreak of SARS (
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome).
The outbreak led to a rapid decline in tourism, severely damaging the economy. “As soon as the outbreak began,” said a Tourism Board spokesman, “we realized it would be pretty embarrassing, but it was too late to pull the ads.” What was so embarrassing? One of SARS’ main symptoms is shortness of breath.

The bestselling tie colors in the U.S.: blue and red.

AERO-
NUTS

The first balloonists and aviators were called
aeronauts,
from the Greek
aer,
meaning “air,” and
nautes,
meaning “sailor.” Judging from the crazy risks some of them took, common sense was not a job requirement.

P
ILATRE DE ROZIER

Claim to Fame:
The first person ever to ascend in a balloon, in 1783.

Other
Claim to Fame:
He tried to combine the two early methods of ballooning: hot air, which used ordinary air heated by an open flame, and hydrogen gas, which is lighter than air but is highly explosive when exposed to fire. (Helium, which is not explosive, was not discovered until 1868.)

When he attempted to float across the English Channel on June 15, 1785, he used a “hybrid” balloon—one compartment filled with air heated by an open flame, the other filled with explosive hydrogen gas.

What Happened:
Exactly what you think happened: about 15 minutes into the flight, the flame found the hydrogen and de Rozier’s ballooning career ended with a bang as he plunged more than 3,000 feet. De Rozier, the first person to ascend in a balloon, also became the first person to die in one.

MARIE BLANCHARD

Claim to Fame:
Ballooning’s first female aeronaut and the widow of Jean-Pierre Blanchard, the first person to cross the English Channel by balloon (1784).

Other
Claim to Fame:
She tried to put a spark back into ballooning—literally.

Background:
Watching the first aeronauts float into the sky in huge balloons was a thrill in the 1780s. But by the turn of the 19th century, aerial shows weren’t as big a deal as they had been just a decade before. Even well-known pioneers like the Blanchards had trouble making a living at it.

Jean-Pierre had a heart attack and fell out of his balloon during a flight over the Netherlands in 1808. Confined to his bed and unable to fly, he was so broke that he suggested his wife drown herself, since he had “nothing to leave her.”

Q: Mom’s a
flyer
, and Dad’s a
boomer
—what are they? A: Kangaroos. (Baby’s a
joey
.)

Marie Blanchard ignored this advice and kept ballooning. To keep the crowds coming, she began flying at night, so that she could shoot off fireworks in midflight—not a very good idea considering that Mademoiselle Blanchard preferred balloons filled with explosive hydrogen gas.

What Happened:
On a flight over Paris on July 7, 1819, the fireworks show got a little bigger than Blanchard had bargained for: one of her rockets ignited the hydrogen, causing her balloon to explode. Blanchard managed to land on the roof of a building, but to the horror of the crowd below, she then slid off the roof to the street, breaking her neck. History’s first female aeronaut died just as the first male aeronaut had: in a balloon accident.

IVAN BLAGIN

Claim to Fame:
He was an ace Soviet fighter pilot of the 1930s.

Other
Claim to Fame:
The first aviator to become a dirty word.

Background:
In 1934 the Soviet Union scored a propaganda coup when it rolled out the
Maxim Gorky,
then the world’s largest airplane. Bigger than a Boeing 747, the
Maxim Gorky
had a movie theater, newspaper office, 16-line telephone exchange, darkroom, laundry, pharmacy, and café.

On some flights the
Maxim Gorky
was accompanied by an ordinary single-engine plane, so that onlookers could compare the two and see just how big the
Maxim Gorky
really was. On May 18, 1935, Ivan Blagin was the pilot flying the smaller craft. He was supposed to fly in tandem with the large plane…but he decided to perform aerobatic stunts instead to impress the crowd below.

What Happened:
When Comrade Blagin tried to loop his plane around the
Maxim Gorky,
he miscalculated the distance and slammed into one of its wings, causing both planes to break apart several thousand feet above the ground. Blagin died in the crash, as did all 43 people aboard the
Maxim Gorky
. Soviet officials were so furious with Blagin that they coined a new word—
blaginism—
which means “selfish exhibitionism and lack of proper Socialist discipline.”

Charles Lindbergh’s first words after his historic flight: “Are there any mechanics here?”

TAWK O’ DA TOWN

While looking through the book
New Yawk Tawk
by Robert
Hendrickson, we were surprised to find out that many words and
phrases in the English language were born in the Empire State.

SENT UP THE RIVER.

Slang for “sent to prison.” The river is the Hudson and the prison is Sing Sing, which is upriver from New York City.

DEPARTMENT STORE.

It didn’t invent the concept of one store with different departments, but the first store to actually call itself this was H. H. Heyn’s Department Store in 1887.

COCKAMAMIE.
Meaning “worthless” or “absurd,” this word may come from the inability of early 20th-century kids in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to pronounce
decalcomania,
a cheap picture to be transferred onto wood or china (a decal).

FLEA MARKET.
It got its name because secondhand items have fleas, right? Guess again. Downtown Manhattan was home to
vallie
(valley)
markets
in Dutch Colonial days.

The term was abbreviated to
vlie
(pronounced “flee”)
market,
and was eventually anglicized to
flea market
.

COWBOY.
Sounds like a word from Wyoming, but it was actually the term given to bands of men who rustled cows in New York in the 1800s.

REUBEN.
This grilled sandwich of corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing on rye bread was invented at Reuben’s Delicatessen in Manhattan at the turn of the 20th century.

ALMIGHTY DOLLAR.

Coined by New Yorker Washington Irving in 1836: “The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout the land…”

PUNK ROCK.
Attributed to
Punk
magazine editor Legs McNeil, describing the 1970s music scene that started in lower Manhattan.

MULTIMILLIONAIRE.
At his death in 1848, New York fur trader John Jacob Astor was worth $20 million (about $80 billion in today’s dollars). The term was first applied to him.

Polls show that Republicans brush their teeth more often than Democrats do.

RUSH HOUR.
First used to describe commuter gridlock on New York streets in 1890.

OUT IN LEFT FIELD.
Far from the action.
Right
field might be more fitting, because that’s where the fewest baseballs go. But at Yankee Stadium, the seats in left field were far away from the biggest player of the day,
right
fielder Babe Ruth.

PORTERHOUSE STEAK.

Named in 1814 for the New York restaurant that popularized it, Martin Morrison’s Porterhouse.

YUPPIE.
An acronym of “
y
oung
u
rban
p
rofessional.” This term comes from New York City in the 1980s. Possibly coined by Jerry Rubin, one of the founders of the 1960s
yippie
movement.

THREEPEAT.
Coined in 1990 by San Francisco 49ers running back Roger Craig, describing his hopes for a third Super Bowl win the following year. (They didn’t threepeat.)

PUBLIC RELATIONS.

First used by publicity writer Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, for his 1920 wedding announcements in an attempt to make his occupation sound more respectable.

BUNT.
A baseball term meaning to hit the ball softly. Most likely a corruption of the word
butt
(as in “butting” the ball with the bat). The first known utterance of
bunt
was in 1872 by a player named Pearce on the Brooklyn Atlantics.

BLAST FROM THE PAST.

Made popular by NYC disc jockey Murray the K in the 1960s, referring to old records.

KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES.
Created by New York cartoonist “Pop” Momand in 1913 as the title of a comic strip that showed middle-class people living beyond their means. It was originally going to be called “Keeping Up with the Smiths,” but Momand changed it because he thought “Joneses” sounded better.

HEADLINE.
The first one appeared on the October 27, 1777, edition of the
New York Gazette.

SIDEKICK.
New York writer

O. Henry first recorded the term in 1904. It was street slang for “buddy.” Why? Men’s side pants pockets—called
side-kicks—
were the most difficult for pickpockets to reach and therefore reliable, like a trusted friend, always at your side.

Technical term for goosebumps:
horripilation
.

TRUE GLUE

It’s been used on elephant tusks, racing cars, space shuttles—even human wounds. It’s
cyanoacrylate,
better known as superglue. Here’s its story.

A
CCIDENTAL INVENTION

Dr. Harry Coover was a researcher working for Kodak Research Labs in 1942. While trying to develop a clear plastic gun sight for use during World War II, he discovered something else: cyanoacrylates. But it was no good for what he needed—it stuck to everything, which created a huge mess. So he set it aside and moved on.

Nine years later Dr. Coover was working at the Tennessee Eastman Chemical Company. This time he was trying to find a tough polymer for jet canopies. While experimenting, he remembered the cyanoacrylate and wondered about its ability to refract light. A fellow researcher named (ironically) Dr. Fred Joyner spread a film of ethyl cyanoacrylate between two prisms of a refractometer. Not only did it not refract light, but it once again left a big sticky mess. And no matter how hard they tried, the two scientists couldn’t pry the expensive prisms apart.

Embarrassed, they sheepishly told company execs about the ruined equipment. But instead of ridicule, they received praise—and orders to begin developing the adhesive for commercial use. Eastman Compound #910 hit the market in 1958, but initial sales were low. Why? People didn’t believe Eastman’s claims about the glue. So to prove its worth, Dr. Coover appeared on the TV quiz show
I’ve Got a Secret
and lifted host Gary Moore completely off the floor…using only a single drop of the glue.

HOW IT WORKS

Here’s how it works: Cyanoacrylate, CA for short, is a highly reactive liquid, and when left to its own devices will quickly solidify. The addition of an acid stabilizer prevents the CA from reacting and keeps it in a liquid state. When the acid stabilizer comes into contact with a catalyst, its stabilizing effect is neutralized. This allows the CA molecules to react with each other, forming long polymer chains. The catalyst for the acid stabilizer is hydroxyl ions, which are conveniently located in every molecule of water. So do you have to mix CA with water? No. Most surfaces already have a tiny bit of water on them. If they don’t, there are always minuscule amounts of water available in the air. The water acts like a trigger, allowing the molecular structure of the CA to change. The molecules join up like a long series of popper beads. What was a thin liquid becomes a hard mass of molecular spaghetti noodles, bonding to whatever it contacts.