Uncle John’s Impossible Questions & Astounding Answers (36 page)

Well, he used to. In recent years, Krampus has been deemed too scary for kids, so grown-up Austrians have adopted him as their mascot for a boozy three-day weekend at the beginning of December known as
Krampustag
.

Whose head did Elizabeth Throckmorton carry around in a leather satchel for 29 years?

The embalmed head of her husband, Sir Walter Raleigh.

Before he lost his head, Raleigh, born in 1552, was a well-to-do English admiral, politician, explorer, and aristocrat. Most famously, he brought tobacco back from an expedition to the New World and popularized it among London’s elite. At the age of 28, Raleigh became a favorite courtier of Queen Elizabeth I and later named the Colony of Virginia after her (Elizabeth was known as “The Virgin Queen”). But Raleigh’s true love was the queen’s handmaiden, Elizabeth Throck-morton. The two secretly married in 1592. When the queen found out, she was devastated and briefly imprisoned the couple. After their release, Raleigh tried to win back Her Majesty’s favor by leading an expedition to find a legendary gold-rich land known as El Dorado in Venezuela. He failed.

The queen’s successor, King James I, disliked Raleigh and in 1600 imprisoned him for an alleged plot to overthrow the monarchy. After serving 12 years of a life sentence, Raleigh was given another chance to redeem himself. He set sail again to find El Dorado…and failed again. Even worse, he attacked some Spanish soldiers against James’s orders. Relations with the Spanish were strained, so in 1618, Raleigh, now 66 years old, was made an example of and beheaded. Throckmorton was inconsolable: She kept his embalmed head in her satchel for three decades until she died in 1647. Then the head was reunited with the rest of his corpse. You can visit both in the church of St. Margaret’s, Westminster.

If Earth’s history were squeezed into one year, at what time on what day would humans appear?

If Earth’s entire history were compressed into one 365-day year, modern humans wouldn’t show up until about 15 minutes to midnight on December 31.

This calculation is based on the prevailing theory that Earth is 4.6 billion years old. So, by this model, our planet was “born” on January 1 when it solidified into a ball. After a few “months” (a billion years or so) of wind and rain wearing down mountains and creating oceans, bacteria came along in late March. In June, most of North America was still underwater. In July, the first plant life appeared. In August, the first fish. In September, the first insects. Starting in October, the dinosaurs ruled for about a month. Then, right around the time a huge asteroid hit Earth just after Thanksgiving, the dinosaurs disappeared. On Christmas, the Colorado River began its long, slow process of carving the Grand Canyon. The first true mammals didn’t scurry about until sometime on December 28.

Finally, at noon on New Year’s Eve, hominids started standing up on their own two feet. At 11:00 p.m., the Neanderthals showed up. Modern humans didn’t join the party until 11:45 p.m., and they didn’t start building cities until about 11:55. At about 20 seconds to midnight, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. The next five centuries—though a blip on the geologic timescale—have seen a lot of things change on planet Earth. Let’s see what happens next year!

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Well, we’re out of space, and when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go. Tanks for all your support. Hope to hear from you soon.

Meanwhile, remember…

Keep on flushin’!