Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader® (17 page)

Largest cyclone on record: Typhoon Tip (1979). Diameter: half the size of the continental US.

Movie:
Last Holiday
(2005)

Edit:
During an airplane scene in this comedy, when the passenger sitting in front of Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah) reclines his seat-back, it hits her knees. The two passengers argue, and Byrd goes into a tirade about the greedy airline putting the seats so close together in the economy-class section. In the Qantas version of the film, the entire seat argument is deleted, including the part where everyone in economy class cheers Byrd’s tirade.

Movie:
Up in the Air
(2009)

Edit:
In this romantic comedy, corporate downsizing expert Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) has trainee Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) in tow while going through airport security. His advice for getting through quickly: “Never get behind old people. Their bodies are littered with hidden metal and they never seem to appreciate how little time they have left. Bingo, Asians. They pack light, travel efficiently, and they have a thing for slip-on shoes.” And then Natalie says, “That’s racist.” In the United Airlines version instead of “Bingo, Asians,” a Clooneyesque voice says, “Business people.” To which Natalie replies, “That’s racist.”

Movie:
Speed
(1994)

Edit:
The plot is all about keeping a bus moving at 50 mph or greater so that the bomb planted on it doesn’t blow up. In the film’s climactic scene, the bus plows into a cargo plane. Result: The bus and plane both explode in a gigantic fireball. The cargo plane was being towed across a runway—it wasn’t flying, taxiing, taking off, or landing when the bus hit. Still, any frames showing the plane were cut from the airline version; all viewers saw was the fireball. As the movie’s producer Mark Gordon said, “The audience was just left figuring, geez, I guess the bus must have crashed into...something.”

Fire escapes, laser printers, and bulletproof vests were all invented by women.

CALCULATOR WORDS

When calculators became cheap in the 1970s, millions of kids discovered that they could spell out words using numbers that look like letters and flipping the screen upside down. Can you guess these? (Answers on
page 536
.)

1.
What bacon does when it hits a hot pan: 372215

2.
If you make an omelet, you’ll end up with a lot of these: 577345663

3.
Central American nation: 321738

4.
Where caged creatures live:0.02

5.
Turtle hut: 77345

6.
A traditional Inuit home:0.0761

7.
Norwegian city: 0.750

8.
He has no home but the rails: 0.804

9.
Similar to a clarinet, but with two reeds instead of one: 3080

10.
Cowboys wear it instead of a tie: 0.708

11.
The capital of Idaho: 35108

12.
Emmy Award-winning TV show: 3376

13.
Search me: 376006

14.
If the tide doesn’t flow, it...: 5883

15.
Immigrant island: 51773

16.
A paid male “companion”: 0.70616

17.
They’re alive, with the sound of music: 57714

18.
Black gold! Texas tea! 710

19.
What black gold (or Texas tea) does when it emerges from the ground: 53200

20.
Building block: 0.637

21.
Where your boss might tell you to go: 7734

22.
Letter-cube board game: 376608

23.
Some people collect stamps, others go birdwatching: 5318804

24.
Russian ballet company: 1045708

25.
Uncle John’s handwriting: 378163771

Caterpillars have mouths; butterflies don’t. (They have a
proboscis
instead.)

STUNG!

In police lingo, a “sting” is a covert operation in which deception is used to catch a person committing a crime. Sometimes they’re scary, sometimes they’re ingenious, and sometimes they’re just plain dumb. Here are a few examples
.

T
HE RUSE:
In 2001 two representatives from a London-based defense contractor met with government officials in India. They wanted to sell night-vision cameras, binoculars, and similar items to the Indian military, they said.

THE HOOK:
Without having to show a single sample of their products, over the next few months the men secured several large contracts...in exchange for bribes.

GOTCHA!
Later in 2001, the Indian political magazine
Tehelka
broke a blockbuster story: They had video of Indian government and army officials taking cash payments from a bogus British defense contractor. The “contractors” were actually journalists with the magazine. In all, 34 members of the Indian military and government were videotaped accepting bribes. They included colonels and generals and also Bangaru Laxman, the president of the Indian People’s Party—the ruling party in the country at the time. Most of the people who took payoffs were forced to resign, but even though they were seen
on videotape
accepting bribes, not a single one went to prison. A few were finally arrested in 2006, but their cases are still unresolved.

THE RUSE:
In November 2007, hundreds of people around Fargo, North Dakota, received letters containing invitations to a party. The invitations were printed on purple stationery, had images of spider webs and skulls on them, and were from an outfit called “PDL Productions.”

THE HOOK:
They weren’t your average party invitations. They were for a party at a Fargo nightclub...with British rock legend Ozzy Osbourne. Osbourne was performing at the Fargodome later that night, so the invitees were also promised backstage passes to the show.

GOTCHA!
Forty-four invitees showed up at the club...and were arrested on the spot. It was all part of a sting set up by Fargo Sheriff Paul D. Laney (that’s what “PDL” stood for), who had the specially made invitations sent to hundreds of people who had outstanding-arrest warrants. When Osbourne heard about the stunt, he was not amused. “This sheriff should be ashamed of himself for using my celebrity to arrest these criminals,” he said in a statement. Laney said he “meant no disrespect toward Mr. Osbourne” and added that several of his deputies had gone to his show after the busts.

A single NASA space suit costs about $10 million.

THE RUSE:
In February 2011, a friend of Jennifer Green, 28, of Washington, D.C., told her he knew about a house that had drugs and cash in it, and that the owners of the house were out of town.

THE HOOK:
If Green sat lookout for him, the man said, he’d burglarize the house and split the loot with her. Green agreed, so the two drove to the house, and she waited in the car while the man broke into the home with a crowbar. He came back with $1,050 in cash and what looked like crack cocaine in a Ziploc bag. Green took $600 and said she didn’t want any drugs.

GOTCHA!
Little did the man know that Jennifer Green was a cop! Oh, wait—yes, he did. The Internal Affairs Department of the D.C. police department had sent the man (a confidential informant) to see if Green, whom they suspected of criminal activity, would go along with the burglary plot, which she did. She was arrested, eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary, and was sentenced to seven months in prison and two years’ probation.

THE RUSE:
In November 2006, two men knocked on the door of a home in Weymouth, Dorset, England. The people inside didn’t let them in because 1) they didn’t know the two men; 2) the men appeared to be very drunk; and 3) the men were dressed in Batman and Robin costumes. The two eventually went away.

THE HOOK:
A short time later, a group of policemen showed up at the same house. The people inside willingly let the officers in, telling them about the masked and drunk visitors.

GOTCHA!
When the officers entered the house, one of the people inside ran out the back door, and...POW!...was nabbed by the Dynamic Duo. Officers Tony Smith and Mike Holman had set up the bizarre costumed sting operation in an attempt to get the man who’d just run out the back door. (He was wanted on drug charges.) “The Batman costume was quite comfortable and not too restricting,” said Smith afterwards.

Longest Morse code telegram: the Nevada state constitution, in 1864. It took two days to transmit it to the War Department in Washington, D.C...and cost $4,313.27.

THE RUSE:
In 2009 some “consumers” in Maryland ordered milk from an Amish Farm in Pennsylvania over the Internet.

THE HOOK:
The owner of the Amish farm, Daniel Allgyer, delivered the milk to the people in Maryland.

GOTCHA!
Busted, Amish milk farmer! Those guys in Maryland weren’t milk drinkers—they were FDA agents, and they’d been investigating Allgyer’s farm for more than a year. Why? Because he was selling raw, unpasteurized, milk, which the FDA says “should not be consumed under any circumstances,” as it can contain dangerous bacteria—and he was transporting it across state lines, which made it “illegal interstate commerce.” Result: In April 2010, U.S. marshals and FDA inspectors staged a surprise early-morning raid on Allgyer’s farm, during which they took pictures and notes. The next day, Allgyer got a letter from the FDA telling him to stop selling raw milk. He didn’t. The FDA filed suit against him. That suit is still in court.

THE RUSE:
In 1978 two wealthy Arab sheiks started inviting U.S. government officials to meetings. The purpose of the meetings: The sheiks had a ton of money, and they wanted help making “investments” in the United States.

THE HOOK:
Several of the government officials happily took the sheiks’ money and “invested” it into their own pockets, in exchange for helping the sheiks secure purchases of casinos, mining companies, and other American businesses.

GOTCHA!
The sheiks weren’t sheiks—they were undercover FBI agents. It was all part of the agency’s “Abscam” operation (from “
Ab
dul,” the name of the fictitious company the “sheiks” owned, and “scam”). And the government officials? They included eight members of Congress. Five members of the House of Representatives went to federal prison, as did Senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey, who was videotaped promising the “sheiks” he’d secure them contracts to open a titanium mine in exchange for shares in the company. Williams remains one of only two U.S. senators in history who went to prison for crimes committed while in office.

THE AMAZING ZEER POT

In parts of the world without electricity, the cooling properties of the simple zeer pot help fight hunger by preventing food from spoiling in hot weather. Now, thanks to the BRI’s Technology Department, you can build one, too
.

W
HAT YOU NEED
•Two clay flowerpots—a large one and a small one.
The small pot must be able to fit inside the large pot. The large pot must be unglazed; the small pot can be glazed or unglazed.

• Sand.
You need enough to fill the space between the small pot and the large pot when one is placed inside the other.

• Water.
You need enough to saturate the sand between the pots.

• A towel,
large enough to cover the top of the pots.

• A stand
for the large pot, so that air can circulate underneath.

WHAT TO DO

•Plug the drain holes in the pots, if they have them, so that the large pot can hold water in, and the small pot can keep water out.

• Put the large pot on the stand and fill it with enough sand so that the tops of the pots are level with each other.

• Fill the space between the two pots with the sand, all the way to the top. Then pour the water into the sand until it’s saturated.

• Put some food or drinks in the small pot, then soak the towel in water and use it to cover the pots.

• Replenish the water as it evaporates.

HOW IT WORKS

The zeer pot, also known as a pot-in-pot refrigerator, cools food through evaporation, in much the same way you cool off by sweating. The water in the sand is absorbed by the porous larger pot, then evaporates into the surrounding air. As the water molecules evaporate, they absorb heat, causing the smaller pot and any food it contains to cool significantly. On a 100°F day, food inside a zeer pot can be kept as cool as 49°F, enabling it to remain fresh for as long as a month instead of spoiling in a day or two.

Manatees (sea cows) and elephants are related.