Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (19 page)

“I’m more apt to count my blessings than my money.”

“I think the fact that I look totally artificial, but I am totally real, has its own kind of magic in it.”

“I want to be an 80-year-old lady whose sex life they’re still wondering about.”

Pizza Hut uses 80 million pounds of tomatoes each year.

You already know the names—here are the people behind them
.

E
DWARD BAUER

Background:
In 1920, at age 20, Bauer used his last $25 to open his own tennis shop. One day while using goose feathers to make badminton shuttlecocks, it occurred to him that goose down might be good insulation material for clothing...and the down jacket was born.

Famous Name:
Bauer landed a government contract to provide down jackets for World War II pilots. After the war, pilots remembered the “Eddie Bauer” label and wrote to his Seattle store, prompting him to start a mail-order business. Bauer retired in 1968, still with just one store. But in 1988 the Chicago-based catalog merchant Spiegel bought the business and expanded it to 500 locations, making “Eddie Bauer” a household name.

CLIFF HILLEGASS

Background:
Bedridden as a child, Hillegass passed the time reading classic literature. While attending the University of Nebraska, he parlayed his knowledge of books into a job as a buyer for the college bookstore. Through the job, he met Jack Cole, who produced Cole’s Notes, a Canadian line of literary study guides. Cole suggested Hillegass do the same thing in the United States.

Famous Name:
In 1958 he took out a bank loan and started writing and printing Cliffs Notes—plot and character summaries of classic works of literature—from his basement. He began with 16 Shakespeare titles. Today Cliffs Notes is owned by John Wiley & Sons, publishers of the
For Dummies
guides. It sells more than five million study guides a year for everything from
Beowulf
to trigonometry. All-time bestseller:
Great Expectations
.

LIZ CLAIBORNE

Background:
Belgian-born Claiborne’s family moved so often that she never finished high school. They eventually settled in the United States, but Claiborne studied art in Europe (her father wouldn’t let her study fashion design). She won a
Harper’s Bazaar
design contest in 1950 and moved to New York, where she worked for Jonathan Logan, a major clothing designer in the 1950s. For the next two decades, Claiborne tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Logan to let her design fashions for the newly emerging class of working women.

Thomas Edison had 5,000 pet birds.

Famous Name:
In 1976 Claiborne started the Liz Claiborne Company and produced the first line of office-suitable clothing for women. Within two years, she was earning $23 million a year. When the company went public in 1981, it had annual sales of $2 billion. By the end of the decade, 60% of working women were wearing Liz Claiborne designs.

IGNAZ SCHWINN

Background:
Schwinn left school in 1871 at the age of 11 to become a mechanic’s apprentice. He soon went to work for himself, traveling the German countryside fixing bicycles by day, working on his own designs at night. When he showed them to Heinrich Kleyer, an established bicycle maker, Kleyer hired Schwinn to design and build a new line of bicycles.

Famous Name:
In 1895 Schwinn formed his own company in the United States. Early bicycles were labor-intensive to build, which made them expensive. But Schwinn found ways to lower the cost, making them available to more people, especially children, who would become their biggest consumer. Schwinn basically created a classic association of American kids and bikes. His company’s most popular model, the Sting-Ray, came out in 1963 and is the bestselling bike ever.

THOMAS J. LIPTON

Background:
At age 15, Lipton scraped together $18 to take a boat from his native Glasgow, Scotland, to New York City. He worked odd jobs ranging from picking rice to fighting fires until he saved up $500, which he used to return to Glasgow and open a cafe in 1870.

Famous Name:
Tea had been popular in the British Isles for 200 years, but it was expensive and unwieldy, sold loose from large chests. Lipton transformed the way tea was sold: he popularized the tea bag and turned tea into a branded product. Today, his company distributes half the tea in the United States.

Acupuncture uses 388 sites on the body, including 26 just for toothaches.

“Common knowledge” is frequently wrong. Here are some examples of things that people believe, but according to our sources, just aren’t true
.

M
yth:
There are no straight lines in nature.

Fact:
Sure there are. Hundreds, in fact, most notably in crystal formations and snowflake patterns.

Myth:
Don’t read in dim light—you’ll hurt your eyes.

Fact:
According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, while reading in good light makes reading easier and limits eye strain, using poor light “causes no permanent eye damage.”

Myth:
There are hundreds of different words in the Eskimo language that mean “snow.”

Fact:
First of all, there is no Eskimo language, because there is no one group of people called “Eskimos.” The word misleadingly refers to dozens of tribal groups living in the northern parts of North America. Most speak different languages, and they typically have less than a dozen words that mean snow.

Myth:
Monkeys and apes groom each other by picking off fleas and ticks. And then they eat them.

Fact:
They’re actually removing dead skin (but they do eat it).

Myth:
More suicides occur during the Christmas season than at any other time of year.

Fact:
Suicides are pretty evenly dispersed throughout the year, but springtime actually has the most occurrences.

Myth:
Bats are rodents.

Fact:
Although bats are similar to rodents, they have more in common with primates (which include us) than they do with rodents.

Myth:
If you get arrested, you’re entitled to make one phone call.

Fact:
It’s only a law in some states (California, for example). In most states, it’s just a courtesy or privilege offered, not a legal right. (Some jurisdictions might even let you make a second phone call.)

Approximately 50 million Americans snore.

Who invented the wheel? When were the Dark Ages? Who came first, Jesus or Buddha? What the heck is the Fertile Crescent? We decided to try to answer these and some other basic questions about history with this timeline of civilization. Ground rules: 1) Obviously, we couldn’t include everything; 2) Many of the dates are approximate, but close enough for bathroom reading; and 3) You’re bound to learn something. Enjoy!

PART I: FROM FARMS TO EMPIRES

•
10,000 to 8000 B.C.
As the last Ice Age ends and the Earth grows warmer,
Homo sapiens
make a revolutionary technological leap: after more than 100,000 years in small nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers, people discover farming. By domesticating plants and animals, they can now grow and store food. Having surplus food means being able to establish permanent, year-round homes. It also means the ability to support larger populations, and not all of those people have to work at acquiring food. This, in turn, leads to the development of other skills such as arts and crafts, sciences, politics, and religion. And then what happened? Towns and cities were built, and all the necessities and inventions that go with them. The Agricultural Revolution is known as the seed of human civilization.

•
8000 B.C.
The world’s first known permanent settlements are founded in the Fertile Crescent, a semi-circular area of land in the Middle East that stretches from present-day Iraq to Egypt. The regular floods of the great rivers there—the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Jordan, and the Nile—create fertile lands that are perfect for farming. The settlements are built around the cultivation of wheat, barley, lentil, and peas, and the domestication of sheep, goat, cattle, and pigs. The world’s oldest known settlement, Jericho, is founded at this time in the Jordan Valley. Tools are still made of stone. World population: about 5 million.

•
7000 B.C.
There is extensive trade and transfer of knowledge between the growing settlements in the Fertile Crescent. Catal Huyuk, possibly the first walled town (rather than a scattered collection of huts), is founded in modern-day Turkey, with irrigated crops. Pottery, an important invention for the storage of food, is now being made in many parts of the world.

During most of Earth’s history, the North and South Poles had no ice.

•
6000 B.C.
The people in the Fertile Crescent weren’t the only ones to discover farming. Farming-based settlements now spring up independently in China, the Americas, and sub-Saharan Africa.

•
5000 B.C.
Large towns are flourishing in the world’s great river basins: the Tigris and Euphrates (the Middle East), the Nile (North Africa), the Indus (southern Asia), and the Yellow River (eastern Asia). Permanent farming settlements now exist on every continent except Antarctica and Australia (where they won’t appear until Europeans arrive there in the 1800s A.D.). Corn is cultivated in Mexico, mangoes in Southeast Asia.

•
4000 B.C.
In Mesopotamia (the Tigris-Euphrates river valley) copper begins to replace stone in tool making. The first plow is invented, greatly increasing crop output. Advances in food production cause a huge spike in world population growth. Agriculture spreads throughout Europe.

•
3500 B.C.
Sumer civilization begins in Mesopotamia with city-states ruled by kings worshiped as gods. Trade and warfare between them spurs great leaps in technology, such as the potter’s wheel and cuneiform script, the first known system of writing. The sail is invented in Egypt, further increasing travel and the transfer of knowledge within and beyond the Fertile Crescent.

•
3200 B.C.
King Menes unites the city-states along the Nile and becomes Egypt’s first pharaoh. Slightly south, Nubian Kush culture in northern Sudan, one of the earliest known black African civilizations, develops on the upper Nile River, trading gold, ivory, and ebony with Egypt. Sumerians invent the wheel. They also mix tin with copper to invent a new, harder metal—bronze—improving tool and weapon making. Sumerians and Egyptians develop number systems, mathematics, and astronomy.

•
3000 B.C.
Egyptians develop hieroglyphic writing. And they brew beer. Sumerians invent glassmaking; Chinese invent silk. Sumerian mathematicians divide the day into 24 hours and hours into 60 minutes. Construction begins on Stonehenge (southern England) by an unknown people. World population: about 14 million.

Dachshunds were originally bred to hunt badgers.

•
2500 B.C.
Hebrew civilization is developing in the Middle East, Olmec civilization in southern Mexico and Central America. The Chinese invent a potter’s wheel. The Egyptians build the Great Pyramid. Sumer has the first standing professional armies.

•
2300 B.C.
After years of war, King Sargon of Akkad (in northern Iraq) succeeds in conquering Sumerian city-states to the south, then conquers his neighbors to the north and west. Result: The world’s first empire (or multiethnic state). The Akkadian Empire will eventually stretch from Mesopotamia to present-day Turkey and Lebanon. The Egyptians invent paper, using the papyrus plant.

•
2000 B.C.
The height of Minoan civilization on Crete (in the Greek Islands). The Minoans are very prosperous, with the world’s first “leisure society”: a large part of even the common person’s time is focused on leisure activities, such as sports. They’re also the first to have indoor plumbing and flush toilets. The Phoenicians are now the primary traders in the region, carrying news of the latest technology from port to port, which makes them instrumental in the spread of civilization. Europe’s Bronze Age begins.

•
1800 B.C.
The Babylonians have conquered and assimilated the Akkadian Empire. Among their achievements: they develop multiplication tables; invent the first windmills (to pump water for irrigation); and create the world’s first written laws, Hammurabi’s Code. Judaism is founded around this time by Abraham. Horse-drawn chariots are used in Egypt. The Chinese become the first civilization to record an eclipse.

•
1600 B.C.
As traders, the Phoenicians need a better record-keeping system, so they develop a phonetic alphabet, for the first time using written characters to represent sounds, rather than objects and concepts. It is the basis of our modern alphabet.

•
1500 B.C.
The earliest known medical textbook is written in Egypt. The
Vedas
, four collections of hymns that will become part of the basis for Hinduism, are written in India. Massive earthquakes and tidal waves in the Mediterranean destroy Minoan cities, ending that civilization. Hatshepsut becomes pharaoh of Egypt, the first woman known to rule an empire.