Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (84 page)

Q: What is the Levator Labii Superioris Alaeque Nasi? A: It’s the muscle you use to smile.

UNANSWERED QUESTION #3

Even if FDR didn’t specifically know about an impending attack on Pearl Harbor, did he try to provoke the Japanese into attacking the U.S. to gain the support of the American public for his war plans?

Suspicious Facts

• FDR told close aides that if the Allies were to be victorious, the U.S. had to enter the war before Japan overran the Pacific and Germany destroyed England.

• FDR told a British emissary that the United States “would declare war on Japan if the latter attacked American possessions...[but] public opinion would be unlikely to approve of a declaration of war if the Japanese attack were directed only against British or Dutch territories.”

• Earlier that year, on July 25, 1941, Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the United States.

• In 1937, Japan sank a U.S. warship in China’s Yangtze River, and relations between America and Japan began deteriorating. Both countries made a public effort to negotiate, but FDR presented a series of impossible ultimatums to the Japanese negotiators and openly loaned money to the Nationalist Chinese, whom the Japanese were fighting at the time.

• According to columnist Pat Buchanan, Roosevelt also committed an act of war against Japan in August 1941, when he secretly approved sending a crack U.S. Air Force squadron, the “Flying Tigers,” to fight alongside the Chinese Nationalists. Although these fliers were officially “volunteers,” Buchanan claims that they were “recruited at U.S. bases, offered five times normal pay [and] sent off to fight Japan months before Pearl Harbor, in a covert operation run out of FDR’s White House....Though their planes carried the insignia of the Chinese army, [they] were on active duty for the United States.”

On the Other Hand

• No evidence
proving
a conspiracy to goad the Japanese into attacking has come to light in the 50-plus years since Pearl Harbor. If there had been one, it would have surfaced by now...wouldn’t it have? We’ll probably never know.

Most popular pizza topping in South Korea: Tuna.

Showers are so commonplace today that it’s hard to think of them as a novelty. But this article by W. Beach, M.D., printed in an 1848 magazine, shows that 150 years ago, dripping water on your head was still a weird and exotic practice.

Reprinted from
The American Practice of Medicine,
1848.

T
he shower bath
is a species of cold bath, an invention by which water falls from a height through numerous holes or apertures, on the head and body. It may be conveniently made by boring numerous small holes through a tub or half barrel, which must be fastened a few feet above the head of the person.

Another tub, of
a sufficient size to contain two pails of water, must be suspended over the other, and made to turn upon an axis. A rope or cord must be fastened to this, so that it can be inverted or turned downward at pleasure.

The person taking
the shower bath must place himself beneath, uncovered; and, having filled the tub with water, he will suddenly pull upon the cord, when almost instantaneously the contents of the upper tub or bath will fall into the lower one containing the holes, and the water will thus be conveyed in numerous and copious streams upon the head and body.

The apparatus should be
enclosed, as well as the body, in a box or frame a few feet square, or large enough to enable the person to stand or turn round with convenience. A few boards or planks enclosed in a small frame is sufficient for the purpose. Rub the body well with a dry towel after the bathing.

This bath may be
used in all diseases of the head, epilepsy, nervous complaints, headache, melancholy, hypochondriasis, obstruction of the menses, and such complaints as arise therefrom, delirium, general debility, &c.

Dr. Sylvester Graham,
*
who has become very celebrated on account of his lectures on temperance and diet, recommends, I am told, the shower bath for numerous complaints.

*The Graham cracker was named after Dr. Sylvester Graham.

A writer in
Zion’s Herald
, over the appropriate signature “Comfort,” has the following interesting remarks on the shower bath, and his own experience in applying the same:

The portable shower
bath may be constructed at a small expense, and placed in a bedroom or other place. Both the bath and the water may be drawn to the desired height by means of a cord or rope running over the pulleys, and fastened to the ceiling.

The person taking
the shower bath is placed within, surrounded partially or wholly by curtains, when he pulls a wire or cord which inverts the vessel overhead containing the water, and lets it fall in copious streams over the whole body.

“The warm, tepid, cold,
or shower bath,” says Dr. Combe, “as a means of preserving health, ought to be in as common use as a change of apparel, for it is equally a measure of necessary cleanliness.” A bath on the above plan can be purchased for eight dollars.

Doctors in ancient China were paid when patients were healthy, not sick.

It’s bizarre to think that the outcome of some of the most momentous events in Western history have hinged on one detail. But that’s the case. Here are four examples of what we mean.

T
HE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Near Miss:
If, in 1776, a pro-British soldier had read a note instead of sticking it in his pocket, America might have lost the Revolutionary War.

What Happened:
The British had captured New York and sent the rebels scattering across New Jersey. Now winter set in, and while British troops quartered in towns and villages, George Washington and his men camped in the wilderness without sufficient shoes or blankets for everyone. Morale was low; Washington badly needed a victory to rally his troops or, he said, “I think the game will be pretty near up.” Just in time, Washington learned that the Hessian troops (pro-British German mercenaries) stationed at Trenton were vulnerable to a surprise attack. So around midnight, December 26, he and his men secretly crossed the Delaware river to strike.

A British spy found out their plans. But when the spy arrived at the Hessian camp, he was told to leave a note for the German-speaking colonel in charge. The colonel was busy “drinking apple-jack and playing cards”...and when he was handed the note, he ignored it. “It was late, he was groggy, and the note was in English, which he couldn’t read. He put it in his pocket.”

“Washington attacked at dawn and took one thousand prisoners in a much-needed victory. The colonel was wounded in the battlefield. As he lay dying, the note was found and translated into German. Had he read it earlier, he admitted, ‘I would not be here.’”

THE TITANIC

Near Miss:
With an extra pair of binoculars, the
Titanic
might have been saved.

What Happened:
After the
Titanic
was launched, but before it left on its maiden voyage in 1912, one of the ship’s lookouts reported that two pairs of binoculars—used by the deck crew to spot icebergs—were missing. He put in a request for a new pair, but the request was denied. So the deck crew kept watch for icebergs with their naked eyes. On April 16, 1912, the
Titanic
struck an iceberg and sank, drowning more than 1,500 people. Lookout Frederick Fleet, one of only 705 survivors, told investigators that the binoculars would have allowed the crew to see the iceberg in time to avoid it.

Ever wonder what we call these things at the bottom of the page? They’re “running feet.”

PEARL HARBOR

Near Miss:
The U.S. almost learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor in time to defend against it.

What Happened:
At 7 a.m. on the morning of December 7, 1941, radar operators Joseph Lockhard and George Elliott had just finished their shift at a radar station on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. But the truck that was supposed to pick them up was late, so they stayed at their consoles a few minutes longer, and at 7:02 Elliott picked up the biggest blip either man had ever seen. They tried to call the control room, but according to John and Claire Whitcomb in their book
Oh Say Can You See
, “the line was dead—the men in the control room had gone to breakfast.”

A PRESIDENT’S LIFE

Near Miss:
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was almost assassinated in 1943, during World War II... by the
U.S. Navy.

What Happened:
On November 14, 1943, the battleship
Iowa
was carrying FDR and his joint chiefs of staff to Cairo for a secret conference with Winston Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek. According to one account, “In one of the U.S. Navy’s most embarrassing moments, the destroyer
William D. Porter
, making a simulated torpedo attack during defensive exercises, inadvertently fired a live ‘fish’ directly at the
Iowa.
Five minutes of pure panic ensued. The
Iowa’s
skipper desperately executed a high-speed turn, trying to get his ship out of the line of fire. However, as the torpedo entered the
Iowa’
s churning wake, it exploded, set off by the extreme turbulence of the sea.”

Yuck! 70% of the dust in your house is skin your family members (including pets) have shed.

California Monthly,
the magazine for alumni of the University of California at Berkeley, features a game called
Twisted Titles.
They ask readers to send the title of a book, film, play, etc., with just one letter changed—and include a brief description of the new work they envision. Here are some that were submitted way back in 1994.

WHAT KIND OF FOOD AM I?

The Donner Party’s marching song.

IN THE BIGINNING

God created baseball.

THE COLD RUSH

Limbaugh is shipped to Alaska.

PREPARATION “I”

To reduce the swelling of an inflated ego.

A FRIDGE TOO FAR

Couch potato dies of thirst.

SHORTS ILLUSTRATED

Playboy
for pygmies.

TOP NUN

Hollywood does the biography of Mother Teresa.

WHEN I SAY HO I FEEL GUILTY

Self-help book for Santas who laugh too much.

WAA AND PEACE

The baby’s finally asleep.

MRS. DOUBTTIRE

AAA gets a new automotive critic.

IN THE LINE OF TIRE

The reason behind road kills.

BORN FRED

Marilyn shocks her classmates at their 25th reunion.

NAIR

The original, unsightly Broadway cast is removed only to appear again in 3 to 4 days.

CAR AND DRIVEL

Magazine features automotive nonsense.

FIFTY WAYS TO LEASE YOUR LOVER

Innovative ways to beat the recession.

I GET A KINK OUT OF YOU

Chiropractic anthem.

I CHUNG

Connie tries a new greeting on TV
.

Scientists say: An average person gives off about as much heat in an hour as a 100-watt lightbulb.

How much obscure stuff about the presidents do you know? Here’s a multiple-choice quiz by Jerome Agel to help you find out. Answers on
page 669
.

1.
Before Congress decided that the responsibility was the nation’s and not an individual’s,_________ personally paid pensions to the widows of former presidents.

(a)
Babe Ruth

(b)
William S. Paley

(c)
Andrew Carnegie

(d)
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

2.
The term “First Lady” was first used to describe the wife of

(a)
President John F. Kennedy

(b)
President Martin Van Buren

(c)
President George Washington

(d)
President Rutherford B. Hayes

3.
The first president to be born in the United States rather than in an English colony was

(a)
Martin Van Buren