Bathroom Readers' Institute's Blog, page 97

Ask Uncle John Anything: Super-Duper Championship Edition

Uncle John knows pretty much everything—and if he doesn’t, he heads his massive research library, or puts one of his many associates on the case. So go ahead: In the comments below, ask Uncle John anything. (And if we answer your question sometime, we’ll send you a free book!)  

Has a city ever won a championship in all four major team sports in the same calendar year?

The short answer: No. They haven’t.

And while there are at least 30 teams in each of the NHL, NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball, there are only 12 metropolitan areas that field a team in all four sports, so it’s a hard achievement to crack. (The largest of these cities is New York City; the smallest is Denver.)

However, there are two times in history in which a city won championships in three out of the four major sports.

In 1935, the Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in hockey, the Detroit Tigers won the World Series in baseball, and the Detroit Lions were the NFL champions. (This is before the NFL and AFL merged, and became the NFC and AFC, respectively, and the champions of each played each other in the Super Bowl.) There was no NBA team in Detroit yet…because there was no NBA yet. The league wasn’t established until the 1940s, and the Pistons moved from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Detroit in 1957.


Thirty-five years later, the same sports improbability took place in New York…where there are many more chances for it to happen, theoretically, because there are so many professional sports teams in New York. There have almost always been at least two pro baseball teams in New York, as well as two each in basketball, football, and hockey. (More if you count suburban New Jersey as part of the New York metropolitan area.) But in the 1969-1970 sports season, there was a lot to celebrate in the Big Apple: The New York Mets won its first World Series, the New York Knicks won its first of two NBA championships, and the New York Jets won the Super Bowl. As for the fourth sport, hockey, New York had just one team at the time, the New York Rangers, which were eliminated in the first round of the 1970 playoffs.

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5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Your Camera Phone

Sure, you can take awesome selfies and delight the entire Internet, but there’s some pretty amazing technology that the tiny computer and advanced camera in your pocket can do.

Do the math.

In the app called PhotoMath, a frame appears on your phone’s screen, and you position the camera so the problem is inside the frame. Take a picture, and the app solves it for you, and then gives you a breakdown of the steps, so at least you can learn how it’s done.

Get the typeface.

There are so many cool typefaces and fonts out there. (For example: The one Wes Anderson uses on all his movies? Futura. The credits MTV uses on music videos? Kabel Black.) With an app called WhatTheFont, you can find out instantly what a font is. Take a photo of some words and the app will give you several possibilities.

Find that color.

Scan a camera over your surroundings, select an area, and the program Color Identifier will tell you exactly what color it correlates to in the ColorHex database of thousands of colors.

Check the mole.

Freaked out by a mole or weird spot, but not sure if you should ask a doctor to look at it? SkinVision allows you to use your cell phone camera to focus in on a skin abnormality, and then it analyzes it.

Measure it.

No more tape measures or rulers and making sure you’re holding them completely straight. An app called EasyMeasure uses your camera’s relative position and tilt angle to figure out distances and measurements. You can find out how far away an object is, when trying to determine if a piece of furniture will fit, for example, or even the height of a building.

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Unplanned World Records

These people made it into the Guinness World Records and probably wish they hadn’t. (This article was originally published in Uncle John’s Weird Weird World EPIC.)

Farthest-Flying Human Projectile (involuntary)

On December 6, 1917, a ship loaded with munitions exploded in the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia, killing more than 1,900 people and destroying the entire Richmond district of the town. It was the largest man-made explosion of the pre-nuclear age, estimated at 2.9 megatons. One man, William Becker, was lucky: He was in a rowboat about 300 feet away from the ship when it exploded, propelling him 1,600 yards—the length of 16 football fields—across the harbor. He swam to safety and lived until 1969.

Shortest Marriage

On September 11, 1976, 39-yearold Robert Neiderhiser dropped dead at the altar just after he and his fiancée, Naomi Nicely, were pronounced man and wife at a Presbyterian church in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

Worst Student Driver

On August 3, 1970, Miriam Hargrave, 62, of Yorkshire, England, finally passed her driving test…on her 40th attempt. After so much effort, she still couldn’t drive. After spending so much money on her driving lessons—$720 was a lot of money in 1970—she couldn’t afford to buy a car.

Oldest Surgery Patient

James Henry Brett Jr. was 111 years and 105 days old when he had hip surgery in Houston in November 1960. He died four months later (from old age, not from the surgery).

Slowest-Selling Published Book

In 1716 the Oxford University Press printed 500 copies of a book titled Translation of the New Testament from Coptic into Latin, by David Wilkins. It took 191 years to sell them all.

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Paul McCartney’s Backward Lentil Soup

20 years ago, Paul McCartney guest starred on The Simpsons. Here are some interesting facts about this standout episode.

McCartney’s appearance coincided with the release of The Beatles Anthology, an exhaustive ABC miniseries chronicling the band’s entire history, as well as a set of three companion albums of rare tracks. McCartney is such an advocate for animal rights and vegetarianism that he agreed to both The Simpsons and ABC’s Anthology under two conditions: That if Lisa Simpson became a vegetarian in his episode, she had to stay a vegetarian for the course of the series. As for ABC, they had to agree not to air ads by Kentucky Fried Chicken during Anthology. Both demands were met.

Lisa meets Paul and Linda McCartney on the Kwik-E-Mart’s rooftop garden, or “Apu’s garden in the shade,” a reference to the Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden.” Paul also suggests to Lisa to play his solo hit “Maybe I’m Amazed” backward, where she’ll find a recipe for lentil soup. At the end of the episode, “Maybe I’m Amazed” plays over the credits. McCartney recorded a specially recorded backward message placed over the song. It’s that recipe for lentil soup, and then the words, “Oh, and by the way, I’m alive.” (That references the “Paul is dead” rumors of the late 1960s.)

Here’s the recipe for Paul McCartney’s backward lentil soup:

one medium onion, chopped
two tablespoons of vegetable oil
one clove of garlic, crushed
one cup of carrots, chopped
two sticks of celery, chopped
half a cup of lentils
one bay leaf
one tablespoon of freshly chopped parsley
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
two and a quarter cups of vegetable stock or water

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Rejected by James Bond

The famous super spy is notoriously fussy when it comes to his automobiles and martinis but the producers behind the film series are even pickier.

One of the most talked about parts of every Bond movie is its theme song. Dozens of famous recording artists (Duran Duran, Adele, Carly Simon, a-ha) have contributed songs over the years, and in 1965, Shirley Bassey and Dionne Warwick both recorded a song titled “Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” for Thunderball. Both were rejected by producers, who wanted a song called “Thunderball.” At some point in the process, country legend Johnny Cash recorded a version but it was ditched because it reportedly sounded like something out of a spaghetti western instead of a spy movie. Eventually, Tom Jones’ “Thunderball” was accepted and appeared over the opening credits.

 The Man in Black isn’t the only singer who received a cold shoulder from 007. Alice Cooper recorded an unused song for The Man With the Gold Gun (1974). Blondie’s track for For Your Eyes Only (1981) was shelved. The Pet Shop Boys’ tried and failed to land a song in The Living Daylights (1987). The British rock band Pulp put together a track called “Tomorrow Never Lies” for Tomorrow Never Dies that didn’t make the cut, as did songs by Saint Etienne and the Cardigans. Amy Winehouse was considered to do a song for Quantum of Solace but her substance abuse problems discouraged the film’s producers from giving her a shot.


There are lots of rejected Bond songs, but lots more rejected Bond actors. Rex Harrison was turned down for the first film, Dr. No (1962), in favor of Sean Connery. When Connery left the series for the first time in the ‘60s, Dick Van Dyke tried to become his replacement but his English accent wasn’t considered good enough. Terence Stamp, who would go on to play General Zod in Superman II, also auditioned. In the ‘80s, Timothy Dalton beat tons of better known-actors for the role. Among them: Mel Gibson who was tossed out because he wasn’t British. Other wannabe Bonds who didn’t make the cut: Michael Caine, James Brolin, Sam Neill, and Clive Owen.

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Smell Ya Later

Looking for love? Throw away those personal ads. Cancel your online dating service. You’ve already got what it takes to find a mate. Just take a deep breath…through your nose. (This article was originally published in Uncle John’s Weird Weird World EPIC.)

The Power of Pheromones

The word comes from the Greek words phero, “I carry,” and hormone, “to excite.” So pheromone literally means “I carry excitement.” And they do. Pheromones are chemicals that send signals between members of the same species. In animals and insects, pheromones can command sexual arousal or sexual receptivity. Humans have more of a choice—or at least they think they do. Pheromones are supposedly odorless, but mammals detect them with an organ inside the nose—called the vomeronasal organ (VNO)—a pair of microscopic pits on the skin inside the nostrils. When the VNO picks up a chemical order from pheromones, get out of the way!

The Birds and the Bees (and Cockroaches)

Scientists first stumbled onto nose power when they studied pheromones in animals and insects.

Male mice emit pheromones so potent they actually promote the sexual development of nearby female mice.


A male moth can detect the pheromones of a female moth from more than a mile away—it has no choice but to fly toward her.


Male cockroaches may be the most pheromone-crazy creatures of all. When a glass rod is doused with female cockroach pheromones, the males try to mate with the rod.

Guys in Sweaty T-Shirts

But how does all this apply to us? Human love is deep and spiritual—right? Skeptics claim that the VNO isn’t functional in adult humans; it can’t possibly react to pheromones. Here’s what the research has revealed:

Underarm sweat has a pheromone component produced by the chemical androstenol. An experiment showed that exposure to androstenol made females more inclined to have social interactions with males (easy, boys, that’s social interactions).


When women were asked to smell unwashed T-shirts worn by different men, they liked the smell of men whose immune systems were different from their own. Since different genes emit different smells, the women may have been sniffing for an evolutionary advantage—acombination of immune-system genes that would be better at fighting off infections.


Extracts of skin cells with pheromones contained in open flasks made people (male and female) warmer and friendlier. When the flasks were closed, the camaraderie faded.


Pheromone-laced perfume increased women’s sexual attractiveness. Women got more requests for dates and sexual intimacy.


A set of female twins—one doused with pheromones, the other with witch hazel—secretly traded places at a singles’ bar. The one wearing the pheromones was approached nearly three times as often as her witch hazel–wearing sister.


Men “under the influence” of pheromones found plain women more attractive—and beautiful women less so.

Stop Paying Through the Nose

There are lots of pheromone products on the market, but are they really the love potions they purport to be? Scientists aren’t sure. One thing they agree on is that the nose plays an important part in mating. People who are born blind or deaf engage in normal sexual behavior, but people born with no sense of smell tend to have diminished sexual behavior.

Further research revealed that men were most aroused when they caught a whiff of lavender combined with pumpkin pie. Women went wild over licorice and cucumber. Women were definitely turned off by the scent of cherries and barbecue smoke. What smells turned men off? Well, none, actually. It seems it’s pretty tough to discourage a guy who’s got love on his…nose.

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7 Factoids About ‘Playboy’

The venerable men’s magazine just announced that it would do away with nudity in its pictorials, citing that it’s “passé.” Here are a few of the most memorable moments from seven decades of Playboy history.

(1) Playboy’s first issue in 1953 contained a nude photo of Marilyn Monroe. Cover price: 50 cents, although if you have one today, it could fetch as much as $2,500 at auction.

(2) Reading it for the articles? Acclaimed sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury serialized Fahrenheit 451 in three issues of Playboy in the spring of 1954. The book went on to win several literary awards and remains one of the most respected and beloved novels of the 20th century. Other famous writers whose stories have appeared in the magazine: Kurt Vonnegut, Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Crichton, John Updike, and Chuck Palahniuk.

(3) A 1976 Playboy interview with presidential candidate Jimmy Carter landed him in some hot water after he admitted that he had “committed adultery in his heart many times.” A lengthy interview with former Beatle John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono was on newsstands across the country on the night of his murder in 1980.

(4) But let’s be honest, authors and interviews are not why people subscribe to Playboy. Countless models and actresses appeared nude within its pages, including Bo Derek, Kim Basinger, Shannen Doherty, Drew Barrymore, Farrah Fawcett, Madonna, Sharon Stone, and Pamela Anderson.

(5) Along with helping Hefner purchase what would become the Playboy Mansion, the magazine was so successful and popular in the early ‘60s that it spawned the Playboy Clubs. Membership to the first one ran $50 for local residents and $25 for “out of towners” who could gain access with a special key. Inside, they could find female staff members dressed in skimpy bunny outfits. At one point, there were 30 clubs located around the world.

(6) At its peak, the magazine had four million subscribers. Today: about 800,000.

(7) 89-year-old Hugh Hefner isn’t a figurehead. He remains Playboy’s CEO.

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Keith Urban Legends

And other fake stories about famous people. (This article was originally published in Uncle John’s Weird Weird World EPIC.)

LEGEND: Keith Richards once had his blood replaced with “clean” blood at a Swiss clinic to beat an addiction to heroin.

THE TRUTH: Richards has admitted to heroin addiction and has made several attempts to break it over the years. In 1973, some accounts say, he did receive some sort of dialysis-type treatment to “filter” his blood, but the idea of getting a “blood change” to treat an addiction isn’t medically possible.

HOW IT SPREAD: Richards says he started the rumor himself: “Someone asked me how I cleaned up, so I told them I went to Switzerland and had my blood completely changed. I was just fooling around. I opened my jacket and said, ‘How do you like my blood change?’ That’s all it was, a joke. I was sick of answering that question. So I gave them a story.” Also, in his 2003 book I Was Keith Richards’ Drug Dealer, onetime Richards friend (and drug dealer, by his account) Tony Sanchez also claims that Richards had his blood “changed.”

LEGEND: When singer Mariah Carey was asked about the death of King Hussein of Jordan in February 1999, she confused him with basketball player Michael Jordan. “I’m inconsolable at the present time,” she told CNN. “I was a very good friend of Jordan. He was probably the greatest basketball player this country has ever seen. We will never see his like again.”

THE TRUTH: It never happened.

HOW IT SPREAD: The story appeared on an Internet chat site, falsely attributed to USA Today and CNN, and it spread from there.

LEGEND: John Denver was an Army sniper in Vietnam.

THE TRUTH: Denver never served in the Army or any other branch of the military. He was inducted in 1964, but he was classified 1-Y—not qualified for service—because he was missing two toes due to a lawnmower accident when he was a boy.

HOW IT SPREAD: Nobody knows exactly who started this one, but it began in the early 1970s. Similar stories have been spread about another “nice guy,” Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He wasn’t a sniper, either.

LEGEND: Frank Zappa, in a “gross-out” competition, once ate a spoonful of feces onstage. Sometimes the claim is that he merely defecated onstage.

THE TRUTH: From The Real Frank Zappa: “For the record, folks: I never took a sh*t on stage, and the closest I ever came to eating sh*t anywhere was at a Holiday Inn buffet in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1973.”

HOW IT SPREAD: “This legend originated in the mid-1960s,” according to urban-legend investigators Snopes.com, “no doubt inspired by the eccentricities of Frank Zappa’s music and appearance.” In a 1993 interview in Playboy, Zappa called it “somebody’s imagination run wild. Chemically bonded imagination.”

LEGEND: Country-music singer Keith Urban, at a concert in North Dakota in July 2006, made all the Canadians in the audience leave—because their government hadn’t supported the United States in the war in Iraq.

THE TRUTH: Urban played at the North Dakota State Fair in Minot on July 21, 2006, but no credible reports have ever been found of him having asked any Canadians to leave. And several Canadians who were at the concert wrote to various Internet sites, saying that they hadn’t been thrown out of the show.

HOW IT SPREAD: Via fake e-mails that made the rounds of the Internet sometime in late 2006. Here’s a sample: “What an ass!!! No more Keith Urban for me!!! (or Garth Brooks) This big-shot western singer asked all Canadians to stand up at the Minot Fair. After everyone stood up, he asked them all to leave the stands because they were not helping out fighting with USA troops…Pass this around and see how his record sales do in Canada!”

LEGEND: U2 frontman Bono, while performing a show in Glasgow, Scotland, asked the crowd for a moment of silence. Then he slowly clapped his hands for a few moments and said, “Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.” An audience member then yelled out in a thick Scottish brogue, “Well, stop f*cking doing it, then!”

THE TRUTH: It was actually British comedian Jimmy Carr who said the famous line…in his comedy act. Carr was making fun of Bono and other celebrities who appeared in a 2005 charity commercial in which they said a child died from extreme poverty every three seconds—every time they snapped their fingers. Carr quipped, “I watched that, and couldn’t help thinking, ‘Well, stop clicking your fingers!’”

HOW IT SPREAD: Via hoax e-mails in 2006 regarding the concert in Glasgow—or New York, or London, or various other places. Even some newspapers fell for it and reprinted the stories, including Australia’s Sunday Mail.

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A Short History of “Peanuts” Movies

Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the others hit theaters this November in The Peanuts Movie. It’s not the first time they’ve appeared on the silver screen.

A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969)

The film opens with Charlie morosely convinced that he’ll never win anything in life (as usual) after his baseball team loses a big game. Lucy convinces him to participate in a spelling bee in order to help him restore his confidence. Charlie’s exceptional spelling skills earn him a slot in a national competition in New York. Unfortunately, the owner of Snoopy the beagle loses the top prize after he ironically fails to correctly spell “beagle.”

Snoopy, Come Home (1972)

Snoopy after he goes in search of his original owner, a little girl named Lila. Woodstock goes with him and the two encounter various hurdles as they rush off to visit her in a hospital. Once they arrive, they’re thwarted by not only a “no dogs allowed” sign but a “no birds” one too. The duo sneak into Lila’s room and Snoopy eventually decides that he wants to live with her instead of Charlie Brown. After handing out all of his worldly possessions to the Peanuts gang, he joins the now cured Lila at her home but is shocked to discover that she also owns a cat. Completely disgusted, he returns home.

Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977)

Charlie Brown and his friends spend a few weeks at a summer camp where they find themselves tormented by a group of bullies. Eventually, they break into teams and embark on an epic river race. After repeatedly cheating, the bullies come close to victory until their heavily damaged boat sinks. Woodstock winds up winning in a small craft made out of twigs. The film ends with Charlie Brown being stranded at the camp after a bus leaves without him. He manages to catch a ride home with Snoopy on his motorcycle.

Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don’t Come Back!!) (1980)

Bon Voyage sends them on a whirlwind trip to Europe. After a spin through the U.K., they travel to France where Charlie Brown and Linus get stuck at a mysterious chateau owned by a mean-spirited baron while their friends stay in a much nicer house. While Woodstock and Snoopy hang out at a nearby pub drinking root beer, their human compatriots solve a mystery involving Charlie’s family. After Snoopy helps rescue them and the baron’s granddaughter from a house fire, the baron vows to change his cruel ways and the gang returns to the US. The film only managed to gross a little over $2 million at the American box office, which may be why The Peanuts Movie is the first Peanuts movie in 35 years.

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Not Quite Cheating

A wise person somewhere once said that cheaters never prosper, but what about those who kinda, sorta cheat? Here’s a few college football teams that have definitely stretched the rules.

The Dramatic Chipmunk

For years, sports teams have provided noisemakers to fans at their home games so they can distract their opponents while they attempt to make free throws or field goals. If a video screen is positioned in the right spot, they may also air a strange clip to further annoy them. The University of Minnesota’s Golden Gophers have used this strategy to frustrate other teams’ kickers. A large screen is positioned on one side of their home field at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis behind the field goal posts. When it’s time for the visiting team to go for a kick, that’s when they break out a clip of “The Dramatic Chipmunk,” a bizarre viral video.

Rule 3-2-5-e

College football games can drag on for hours. In order to speed them up a little, NCAA officials decided enacted Rule 3-2-5-e in 2006. During field goal attempts, this allowed the clock to start when the kicker touched the ball, not when the receiver caught it. Unfortunately, the officials didn’t consider whether or not teams would use this rule to their advantage. That’s exactly what happened when the Wisconsin Badgers and their coach, Bret Bielema, were in the middle of an intense game against Penn State that November. With mere moments left on the clock, Bielema ordered his kicking team to go offsides twice. Doing so didn’t allow Penn State enough time to get their offensive players back onto the field. The Badgers won and at least one more team (the North Dakota State Bison) used the same trick that season before the NCAA got rid of the rule.

The Blue Hose’s Bounce Pass

You may have never heard of this strangely named football team for Clinton, South Carolina’s Presbyterian College but they pulled off an amazing trick play during their first game against a major pponent in September 2010. The Hose’s quarterback threw the ball on the ground behind his receiver while his wide receiver pretended to be upset about it. His acting skills were good enough to briefly trick the defensive backs that the play had ended, giving him enough time to throw the ball to another teammate who made a touchdown. As crazy as it might sound, this trick play (it’s called a bounce pass) is technically legal. Despite their clever trickery, the Hose still went home with a crushing 53-13 loss to Wake Forest.

 

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