Uncle John’s Briefs (36 page)

It didn’t take long for Johnson to realize there was no mine, but he had such a good time in Death Valley that he didn’t care that he’d been duped. He kept returning to the area and eventually bought 1,500 acres in Grapevine Canyon. When his wife, Bessie, began accompanying him on his trips and grew tired of the tents and rude shack that served as accommodations, Johnson decided to build a permanent home.

HOME ON THE RANGE

In 1925 Albert Johnson approached Frank Lloyd Wright to design a house, to be called the “Death Valley Ranch.” But Wright’s design wasn’t grand enough for Johnson, so he hired a second architect, C. Alexander MacNeiledge. Over the next five years, the castle started to take shape.
And because the home was so elaborate, its construction revived the rumors of Scott’s gold strike, rumors that neither Scott nor Johnson did anything to quiet. In fact, Scott (who by this time had earned the nickname “Death Valley Scotty”) bragged to reporters about the castle and said it belonged to him. Johnson perpetuated the lie and would say only that he was “Scotty’s banker.” So Death Valley Ranch became known as “Scotty’s Castle.”

The word
eclair
means “lightning” in French.

In 1931 construction on the castle stopped. The 1929 stock market crash had cost Johnson most of his fortune, and he could no longer afford to keep building. The castle stood unfinished.

DEATH (VALLEY) AND TAXES
In the early 1930s, the federal government began surveying Death Valley in preparation for making it a national monument and discovered that Albert Johnson didn’t actually own the land on which he’d built the castle—the boundary for Johnson’s land was one mile away. It took four years for Johnson to get permission from the government, but in 1937, he bought the land he thought he already owned for $1.25 an acre.

Death Valley officially became a national monument in 1933 and the tourists began pouring in. Johnson, still needing money, opened up the castle for guided tours and paying guests. He and his wife moved to a house in Los Angeles, but Scotty remained at the castle, where he entertained visitors with jokes and stories of the Wild West.

Scotty also continued to brag about the gold mine, which brought some unwelcome attention in the early 1940s. The Internal Revenue Service wanted to know why Scotty had never paid any income taxes on this supposedly fabulous wealth. Finally, Albert Johnson had to admit that he owned the castle and Scott never had a gold mine in Death Valley.

END OF AN ERA
Albert Johnson died in 1948, but Death Valley Scotty lived at the ranch until his death in 1954. After that, a charitable organization called the Gospel Foundation inherited the castle and maintained it. In 1970 the National Park Service bought the site for $850,000.

Today, 200,000 people visit the ranch annually. Park officials wear authentic 1930s garb and regale tourists with the tale of Death Valley Scotty and the legend he built on a lie.

Nails the landing! One in 25 babies is born feet first.

TOY FADS

The Federal Communications Commission used to have a rule banning
children’s TV shows based on existing commercial characters or toys.
The reasoning was that kids are impressionable, and such TV shows
would just be long ads. But in 1982, the FCC repealed the ruling.
Result: TV shows designed to sell toys…lots of toys
.

T
EENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES
Description:
Radioactive ooze turns four pet turtles into humansize crime-fighting, pizza-eating, jive-talking teens named Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello.
A Fad Is Born!
In 1984 cartoonists Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman self-published
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
, a violent but darkly funny comic book. They printed 50,000 copies, all of which sold out in a few weeks. After that, the comic was published regularly for two years but garnered little interest beyond comic book fans. In 1986 advertising executive Mark Freedman discovered the comic and bought the rights from Laird and Eastman, figuring the Turtles could be a cultural phenomenon if they were marketed to kids, rather than older comic-book collectors. A newer, more kid-friendly comic was introduced, along with a TV cartoon series and lots and lots of Ninja Turtle toys. Freedman was right: In 1989, $250 million worth of toys were sold; in 1990, a live-action movie earned $140 million; and in 1991, a Burger King promotion sold 200,000 Turtle videos per week. But all fads are destined to die. Sales plummeted in 1992, and the cartoon was cancelled. A grittier, back-to-basics comic book was released, but it bombed. New cartoons and new toys were released in 2003, but they flopped too. A big failure? Hardly. Since 1984 the Ninja Turtles have generated $6 billion in revenue.

TRANSFORMERS
Description:
Giant robots that can “transform” into vehicles crash land on Earth from outer space, and wage battle for “energon” cubes.
A Fad Is Born!
In 1982 Hasbro Toys scoured the world for toys on which they could base cartoons, which they could then use to sell more
toys. They bought the rights to three Japanese toy lines: Takara Toys’ Car Robots and Micro Change, and Bandai’s Machine Men. The toys were all die-cast metal robots that, with a few twists and turns, became toy planes, cars, or other objects. Nearly 20 million of these toys had been sold around the world—but would they sell in the United States? Industry insiders predicted that Hasbro’s “Transformers” would flop—complicated Japanese toys were untested and parents would balk at paying $10 for a toy car, they said. But the insiders were wrong. Kids loved the strange new toys and action-packed cartoon. (It didn’t hurt that kids could figure out how to make the toys “transform,” while their parents couldn’t.) By the end of 1985, $380 million worth of Transformers had been sold. Sales and interest declined after that, but various versions of the show have been on the air since 1985 and related toys still sell well, with further help from the two recent
Transformers
films. The success of the toy line helped make Hasbro the second-largest toymaker in the world.

The paper clip was patented by William Middlebrook, a Connecticut inventor, in 1899.

MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS
Description:
With the help of huge robot dinosaurs, six teenagers use ninja skills to fight giant monsters sent to Earth by an evil witch who lives in a dumpster on the moon.
A Fad Is Born!
The most popular kids show and toy line of the 1990s is an unlikely success story. In 1986 TV producer Haim Saban had an idea: take footage of the robot dinosaurs from the Japanese action show
Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger
(Dinosaur Squadron Beast Ranger) and combine it with newly shot scenes of American teenagers. The special effects from the Japanese show were cheap and sloppy, mixing miniature models, marionettes, and stuntmen in rubber suits. It took Saban seven years to sell it to a network, but Fox finally agreed to air it. Good move. It was an instant hit in the fall of 1993, becoming the #1 kids show on TV. Bandai was contracted to make toys based on the teenagers and robots, but didn’t anticipate the high demand. How high? Twelve million toys were sold in 1993. By 1996 the show had exhausted all the available
Kyoryu
footage, so it had to start stealing from other Japanese shows. Now, each fall,
Power Rangers
changes its entire premise and cast. New heroes, monsters, robots, villains—and toys—are introduced. To date, Bandai has sold over 160 million Power Ranger toys.

Burn it off: Your body temperature rises slightly when digesting a large meal.

SCOTLAND’S DISH

Back in the 1950s, the BRI’s future food historian, Jeff Cheek, took a
trip to Scotland while on one of his clandestine missions with the CIA
.

(He won’t tell us why he was there.) But he did write this story of
haggis for us—the origin, the tradition, and the elusive
hunt for a wee, tiny beastie
.

W
ASTE NOT, WANT NOT
Scotland has given the world many gifts: plaid, golf, the poetry of Robert Burns, and Scotch whisky. They have also offered us their national dish—
haggis
—but there are few takers…once they find out what haggis is made of. It is the offal (the waste parts) of a slaughtered sheep, minced and then boiled in the sheep’s stomach. The dish and name most likely came from the Vikings—the Swedes have a similar dish,
hagga
, but they use choice cuts of meat to make it. The frugal Scottish farmers, however, wasted nothing, so instead of discarding the lungs, heart, and liver, they used these along with homegrown oats to make haggis. And the Scots have revered it for centuries.

In his “Address to a Haggis,” 18th-century poet Robert Burns called the dish “the Great Chieftain of the Pudding Race.” And it has become a Scottish tradition to serve haggis on Burns Night, January 25, to celebrate the poet’s birthday. Loyal Scotsmen are also supposed to eat haggis on November 30, St. Andrew’s Day, to honor Scotland’s patron saint.

DOWN THE HATCH

Another tradition may explain the dish’s lasting popularity: you don’t eat the haggis by itself—it must be served with “neeps, tatties, and a dram.” Translation: turnips, mashed potatoes, and Scotch whisky. (Possible rationale: everything tastes better if you wash it down with whisky.)

As you might imagine, most non-Scots (and many natives) are quick to reject a dish of innards, so many of the restaurants in Scotland prepare a more palatable version of haggis for their squeamish visitors: it’s cooked in pots instead of stomachs and uses choice cuts of meat instead of the awful offal.

The world record for “haggis hurling” is held by Alan Pettigrew: 180'10".

HAGGIS HUNTING
Now
you
know where haggis comes from, but gullible tourists are told a different tale by the Scots: The haggis is actually a “wee beastie” that lives in the bogs and glens of Scotland. It’s easy to recognize these little creatures—their legs are shorter on one side than the other. Why? From scurrying sideways up the steep Scottish hills, of course. It’s very difficult to find a haggis, as they only come out at night. And they have very sensitive ears.

“So if ye go huntin’ for the haggis, don’t wear anything under ye kilt. The sounda ye underwear rubbin’ against ye plaid will send ’em divin’ for cover, laddie! And another thing: Before ye go, ye’ve gotta drink lots and lotsa Scotch to mask ye human odor. Them haggis have very sensitive noses, too, ye know!”

Result: Scores of happy, half-naked, inebriated tourists wandering around the countryside after midnight, drinking whisky and swearing that they just saw a real, live haggis…but it got away. “If ye com’ back next year,” you’ll be told, “perhaps ye’ll catch one of them wee, tiny beasties.”

Here is a recipe for traditional haggis.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound sheep liver

• 1 large onion, chopped

• 2 pounds dry oatmeal

• 1 sheep stomach, scraped and cleaned

• 1 pound suet, chopped

• 3 cups meat stock

• ½ teaspoon each cayenne pepper, salt, and black pepper

Preparation:
Boil liver and onion until liver is done. Mince together. Lightly brown oatmeal in a hot skillet, stirring constantly to prevent burning. Mix all ingredients. Fill stomach with mixture, pressing to remove the air. Sew stomach securely, then prick several times with needle so it won’t burst. Slow boil for four hours. Serve with “neeps, tatties, and a dram.”

Something to chew on while waiting for the haggis to cook:
A Scottish chef, John Paul McLachlan, created the world’s most expensive haggis for Burns Night in 2005. He marinated Scottish beef in Balvenie cask 191, a 50-year-old Scotch (only 83 bottles exist), and then boiled it in a sheep’s stomach. Cost: $5,500.

Physics fact: If all the empty space around all the atoms in the world disappeared, the entire human race could fit into an area about the size of a sugar cube.

CLOSE
ENCOUNTERS OF
THE CREDIBLE KIND

Investigations into 99% of UFO sightings have resulted in rational and very
Earthly explanations. But then there are those few that simply have no
explanation. Here are three cases that still have the experts baffled
.

S
TRANGE BALL
In 1783 a London, England, man named Tiberius Cavallo, Fellow of the Royal Society, witnessed something that was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. “Northeast of the Terrace,” he wrote in his memoirs, “in clear sky and warm weather, I saw appear suddenly an oblong cloud nearly parallel to the horizon. Below the cloud was seen a luminous body, brightly lit up and almost stationary.” Cavallo described the object as a “strange ball” that was faint blue when he first saw it but then grew brighter and brighter. At one point, it flew high up into the air, then back down, and flew low across the horizon. After a few minutes, “it changed shape to oblong, acquired a tail, and seemed to split up into two bodies of small size.” The object then disappeared over the horizon in a flash, and the last thing Cavallo heard from it was a “loud rumble like an explosion.” Thinking the object may have crashed, Cavallo and other witnesses searched the area, but couldn’t find a craft or an impact crater. One possible explanation: The “explosion” may have been a sonic boom, created when an object goes faster than the speed of sound…but this happened more than 150 years before humans had invented any type of vehicle that could break the sound barrier.