When Do Fish Sleep? (14 page)
In the nineteenth century, notes were produced by private firms as well as the treasury. But all notes, regardless of where they were printed, were issued in green, presumably to provide uniformity.
Could Edson have chosen blue or red instead of a green tint? Certainly. Although our sources couldn’t tell us why green was the original choice, the treasury does have information about why the green tint was retained in 1929, when small-sized notes were introduced:
the use of green was continued because pigment of that color was readily available in large quantity, the color was relatively high in its resistance to chemical and physical changes, and green was psychologically identified with the strong and stable credit of the Government.
And besides, “redbacks” or “bluebacks” just don’t have a ring to them.
Other countries vary the coloring of their bills as well as their size. And why not? Different sizes would enable the sighted but especially the legally blind to sort the denominations of bills easily. But despite occasional rumblings from legislators, the Treasury Department stands by its greenbacks.
Submitted by Paul Stossel of New York, New York. Thanks also to Charles Devine of Plum, Pennsylvania; and Kent Hall of Louisville, Kentucky
.
Why
Do We Have to Close Our Eyes When We Sneeze?
We thought we’d get off easy with this mystery. Sure, a true Imponderable can’t be answered by a standard reference work, but would a poke in a few medical texts do our readers any harm?
We shouldn’t have bothered. We understand now that a sneeze is usually a physiological response to an irritant of some sort. We learned that there is a $10 word for sneezing (the “sternutatory reflex”) and that almost all animals sneeze. But what exactly happens when we sneeze? Here’s a short excerpt from one textbook’s explanation of a sneeze:
When an irritant contacts the nasal mucosa, the trigeminal nerve provides the affect limb for impulses to the pons, and medullai Preganglionic efferent fibers leave these latter two structures via the intermediate nerve, through geniculate ganglion to the greater petrosal nerve, through the vividian nerve and then synapse at the sphenopalatine ganglion…
Get this outta here! Until Cliff Notes comes out with a companion to rhinology textbooks, we’ll go to humans for the answers.
Our rhinologist friend, Dr. Pat Barelli, managed to read those textbooks and still writes like a human being. He explains that the sneeze reflex is a protective phenomenon:
The sneeze clears the nose and head and injects O
2
into the cells of the body, provoking much the same physiological effect as sniffing snuff or cocaine. When a person sneezes, all body functions cease. Tremendous stress is put on the body by the sneeze, especially the eyes.
As Dr. G. H. Drumheller, of the International Rhinological Society, put it, “we close our eyes when sneezing to keep the eyes from extruding.” While nobody is willing to test the hypothesis, there is more than a grain of truth to the folk wisdom that closing your eyes when you sneeze keeps them from popping out, but probably not more than three or four grains.
Submitted by Linda Rudd of Houston, Texas. Thanks also to Michelle Zielinski of Arnold, Missouri; Helen Moore of New York, New York; Jose Elizondo of Pontiac, Michigan; Amy Harding of Dixon, Kentucky; and Gail Lee of Los Angeles, California
.
A few of the many veterinarians we spoke to had seen allergic reactions to poison ivy among animals but all agreed it was exceedingly rare. Poison ivy is not really poison. Humans develop an allergic reaction because of a local hypersensitivity to the oil in the plant. Veterinarian Anthony L. Kiorpes, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, informed us that the same plant that may cause a severe reaction in one human may not affect another person at all.
Elizabeth Williams, of the University of Wyoming College of Agriculture, notes that she has never seen an allergic reaction in deer, but allows:
It’s possible some deer might be allergic to it but we just don’t see the reaction because they are covered with hair. Or it may be that only a very few deer are allergic, and they learn to stay away from poison ivy.
Veterinarian Ben Klein feels that most domestic animals have a built-in immunity to contact allergy dermatitis, such as poison ivy. Furthermore, that same hair Dr. Williams mentioned hiding an allergic reaction also shields the skin against potential reactions, according to veterinary dermatologist Peter Ihrke.
Why don’t ruminants break out when they eat poison ivy or poison oak? Dr. Don E. Bailey, secretary-treasurer of the American Association of Sheep and Goat Practitioners, explains that even if these animals had a tendency toward allergic reactions, which they don’t, the mucus membrane in their mouths is very thick and heavy.
The one animal that most often seems to contract allergic reactions to poison ivy is the dog. Dogs love to roll around in the worst imaginable things. Dr. Ihrke notes that most dogs can withstand the exposure to poison ivy but many of their owners cannot. The owners pet the dogs and come down with severe reactions. Similarly, an innocent vet will examine a dog and break out in a rash, the victim of a communicable disease that doesn’t afflict the carrier.
Submitted by Karole Rathouz of Mehlville, Missouri
.
Why
Don’t Queen-Sized Sheets Fit My Queen-Sized Bed?
Queen-sized beds expanded from 60″ × 75″ to 60″ × 80″ in the early 1960s. You would think that more than twenty-five years would be a sufficient amount of time to manufacture sheets large enough to cover the expanded surface area. And it was.
The problem is that sheets are designed to cover mattresses and the linen industry has no control over what the mattress manufacturers are doing. And what the bed companies are doing lately is driving sheetmakers nuts. As Richard Welsh, senior vice president of Cannon Mills Company, succinctly summarizes:
The sheet industry has experienced problems with fitted sheets for all sizes, not only queen size. The problem is primarily due to the fact that mattress manufacturers have been increasing the depth of their mattresses. As one tries to get an edge on the other, they outsize them by half an inch. There are no standard mattress depths.
When Mr. Welsh first wrote to
Imponderables
, in December 1986, he complained about how the sheet industry, accustomed to fitting six-and-one-half-to seven-inch-deep mattresses, watched in horror as depth inflation hit. In the early 1980s, Cannon increased the length of their sheets to accommodate mattresses from eight to eight-and-one-half inches deep. But soon, the nine-inch barrier was broken. Cannon responded to this problem in 1987 by manufacturing sheets “guaranteed to fit.” These sheets could cover a mattress nine-and-one-half inches thick.
But the mattressmakers never stopped. They invented a whole new genre of bed, the “pillow top” mattress, with pockets of polyester fill on top. Pillow tops have increased the crown space (the highest point of padding) on some mattresses to as high as one foot to twelve-and-one-half inches.
The standard queen-size flat sheet is now 90″ x 102″, which is more than sufficient to cover the 60″ x 80″ queen-size beds if they don’t continue the creep upward. But creep they probably will. On the low end of the market, six-inch-thick mattresses still are available. If you have sheets that are longer than you need, have compassion for the sucker with the pillow top. The same sheet that is too long for you probably isn’t long enough to tuck under his mattress.
P.S. It was inevitable. Fieldcrest and Wamsutta, among others, are now manufacturing sheets specifically for pillow top mattresses.
The main purpose of the cotton stuffed in medicine vials is to prevent rattling and subsequent breakage of pills during shipment. But why cotton? Because of its absorbency, cotton helps keep medications dry. David G. Miller, associate director of the National Association of Retail Druggists, points out that moisture will destroy most drugs.
Still, all the druggists we spoke to recommended taking out the cotton once the container is opened for use. Melvin T. Wilczynski, of the Lane Drug Company, explains that the absorptive characteristics of cotton, which help keep pills dry during shipment, also are capable of absorbing moisture from the environment. If the cotton gets wet and re-enters the bottle, the effectiveness of the medication is jeopardized.
Excess heat and light are also capable of breaking down medications. For this reason, it makes no sense to keep pills in the kitchen, where they are exposed to the heat of ovens, or outside the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, where they could be exposed to harsh light or space heaters.
At one time, Miles Laboratories did put cotton into Alka-Seltzer containers, but found that consumers couldn’t be trusted. If you accidentally get an Alka-Seltzer tablet wet, you get premature fizz—a temporary thrill perhaps, but one that will do you no good when a bout of indigestion sets in.
Miles provides a styrofoam cushion to protect tablets during shipping, but they recommend throwing away the cushion once the bottle is opened. Although styrofoam is not as absorbent as cotton, it is perfectly capable of generating bubbles when wet.
Submitted by Andrew Neiman of Dallas, Texas
.
In
Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise? and Other Imponderables
, we explained why doughnuts have holes. We were pretty smug about our accomplishment too. Then a letter arrives from Jay Howard Horne asking us why bagels have holes. Will there ever be a stop to this mania for knowledge about hole origins?
Nobody knows for sure who created the first bagel. Chances are, it was an accident precipitated by a piece of yeast-laden dough falling into hot water. But we do know who first called a bagel a “bagel.” In 1683, the first Viennese coffeehouse was opened by a polish adventurer, who introduced a new bread called the
beugel
. When Austrians emigrated to the United States in the next two centuries, the beugel was re-christened the bagel.
So what was a Polish man doing opening a coffeehouse in Vienna and creating a hole-y bread?
The king of Poland, Jan Sobiesky, had become a hero in Austria in the late seventeenth century by driving off armed invaders from Turkey. In their escape, the Turks left behind sacks of enough coffee to keep every citizen of Vienna up nights for a month, inspiring the opening of many a coffeehouse in Vienna.
The coffeehouse owner took a popular yeast bread called kipfel and reshaped it into the bagel shape we know and love today. The bread was meant to resemble the stirrups of brave King Sobiesky, who fought on horseback to save Vienna from the Turks. “Bagel” is derived from the German word for stirrup, “bugel.”