Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (30 page)

USB CHIMP.
It’s a rearview mirror for your computer that sends an image of what’s going on behind you onto your screen (so you can hide the video game you’re playing if the boss is coming).

USB ROCKET LAUNCHER.
It’s a triple-barreled cannon that uses compressed air to shoot 3" foam darts from your computer at your cubicle mates up to 20 feet away. (There’s also a version that looks like a mini circus cannon.)

USB CELL.
It’s a AA battery, but inside is a USB plug. Hook this $10 device up to your computer, and five hours later, it’s a near-fully charged AA battery usable in any battery-operated device. (Or you could go buy a new AA battery for $1 or so at the store across the street.)

QX5 USB MICROSCOPE.
Your computer powers a 200x magnifying lens. It also takes photos and videos of your specimens and saves them to your computer.

USB TURNTABLE.
Combining yesterday’s music technology with today’s, this is a record player that plugs into your computer. You can then play your old records (or your parents’) on it and convert the songs into digital MP3 files saved onto the computer.

USB PAPER SHREDDER.
This desktop shredder is only about 6" long, so before you can let it shred your sensitive documents into tiny pieces, you have to tear your sensitive documents into tiny pieces.

ARMAGEDDON HUB.
Possibly the most useless gadget available. It’s a small metal box with two switches, a key, and a red “ultimate destruction” button. Turning the switches and the key and pressing the button, evidently, induces international nuclear war. (Actually, all the Armageddon Hub does when “activated” is make some siren noises.)

We all know the story of the
Titanic
—we’ve seen the movies (there have been several), watched the TV specials, and even read the books and magazine articles. But as we at the BRI have discovered over the years, there’s always something new to learn about even the best-known stories
.

T
HE LONG TRIP HOME
In 1910 Japan’s Transportation Ministry sent an official named Masabumi Hosono to Russia to study that country’s railroad system. Hosono finished his assignment in early 1912 and, following a brief stop in London, began the next leg of his trip home by embarking across the Atlantic on the RMS
Titanic
. Needless to say,
that
leg of the trip didn’t go quite as planned. On April 14, at 11:40 p.m., just four days into its maiden voyage, the
Titanic
struck an iceberg while traveling near top speed and began taking on water.

It’s doubtful that anyone on the
Titanic
, which had been advertised by the White Star Line as being “practically unsinkable,” realized at first that the ship had suffered a mortal blow. There were plenty of people on board who didn’t even know the ship had hit anything. Many of those who noticed felt only a slight shudder followed by the sound of the engines coming to a stop.

Hosono apparently slept through the entire thing. The first he learned of it was shortly after midnight, 25 or 30 minutes after the collision, when he was awakened by a knock at the door of his second-class cabin and told to put on his life vest.

Three times when he tried to make his way to the lifeboats, he was turned away by the ship’s officers, who ordered him to return to the lower levels of the ship. They likely assumed that, as a Japanese person, he must have been traveling in third class, or “steerage.” On his third attempt Hosono managed to slip past a guard and make his way to the lifeboats.

Was the
Titanic
sinking, or was it just floating dead in the water, waiting to be assisted by the ocean liner
Carpathia
or one of the half a dozen other ships who’d received her distress calls and were already steaming to her aid?

We know the answer today, of course, but on that fateful night only three men on the
Titanic
did
—
Edward J. Smith, the captain; Thomas Andrews, the chief designer; and J. Bruce Ismay, the president of the White Star Line. They knew not only that the
Titanic
would sink, but also that it would sink well before help arrived. And they kept the information to themselves, fearing a panic that would cause the passengers to stampede the lifeboats, which when filled to capacity could carry only 1,178 of the more than 2,200 people on board. Even the officers ordered to organize the loading of the lifeboats had no idea the
Titanic
was going down.

Withholding this information did help to keep the loading of the lifeboats orderly, but probably at the cost of hundreds of needless deaths. Many passengers and even many crew members, not suspecting the gravity of the situation, preferred to remain on board rather than risk climbing into the lifeboats. If you had booked passage on a ship that was said to be unsinkable, would you be willing to leave its warm, dry, and seemingly safe environs to climb into a tiny, swinging lifeboat in the middle of the night, and be lowered on pulleys 65 feet straight down into the freezing, iceberg-filled Atlantic? Even the captain’s order to load women and children first must have cost some passengers their lives, because it meant that married women were being asked to separate from their husbands, which many refused to do.

Besides, what was the rush? As far as the crew members loading the boats knew, the
Titanic
wasn’t sinking. The lifeboats were simply going to ferry passengers to the rescue ships when they arrived, and that was still hours away. There would be plenty of time to load more people into the lifeboats later, if they didn’t want to go now. The crew members filled the boats with as many people as wanted to get in, and then lowered them into the water. In the end, only three of the
Titanic
’s 20 lifeboats were filled to capacity when they set down in the Atlantic.

Hosono must have sensed what was happening earlier than many of the passengers did, because as he stood next to Lifeboat No. 10 as it was being loaded, he was already steeling himself for the end. “I tried to prepare myself for the last moment with no agitation, making up my mind not to leave anything disgraceful as a Japanese,” he explained in a letter to his wife. “But still I found myself looking for and waiting for any possible chance to survive.”

That chance came moments later, when the officer loading No. 10 could not coax any more women or children into the boat. “Room for two more!” the officer called out. Hosono watched as another man jumped into the boat.

“I myself was deep in desolate thought that I would no more be able to see my beloved wife and children, since there was no alternative for me than to share the same destiny as the
Titanic
,” he wrote. “But the example of the first man making a jump led me to take this last chance.” Hosono hopped in, and at 1:20 a.m. he and 34 other people were lowered to safety in a boat built to hold 65.

The
Titanic
, by now sitting very low in the water, had just one hour left to live. Eight of the 20 lifeboats had already launched and only one of them—Hosono’s No. 10—was filled even
halfway
to capacity. (Lifeboat No. 1 launched with only 12 passengers out of a possible 40.) Many of the passengers still aboard the
Titanic
were just beginning to realize that the “unsinkable” ship might really be sinking.

When the
Titanic
finally slipped beneath the waves at 2:20 a.m., Hosono watched from Lifeboat No. 10. He described the experience in his letter to his wife, which he wrote on board the
Carpathia
as it brought the survivors to New York. “What had been a tangible, graceful sight was now reduced to a mere void. And how I thought about the inevitable vicissitudes of life!”

Of the more than 2,200 passengers and crew aboard the
Titanic
, just over 700 survived, including 316 of the 425 women and 56 of 109 children. Even if every woman and child
had
been accommodated in the lifeboats, there still would have been enough room for nearly 700 of the 1,690 men, yet only 338 men survived. Not
everyone who perished did so because they declined an opportunity to climb into a lifeboat, not by a long shot. But this must surely have been the cause of many deaths.

In the shock and horror that followed one of the worst peacetime disasters in maritime history, many of these subtle details were lost on the newspaper-reading public. As they counted up the 162 dead women and children, many readers wondered how 338 men had managed to find their way into the lifeboats, “displacing” those helpless victims. Hosono received some of the harshest criticism of all. Not from the American newspapers, who expected chivalrous self-sacrifice from well-bred gentlemen of the middle and upper classes, but were dismissive of foreigners and the rabble traveling in steerage. Few American papers even took an interest in Hosono’s story. One that did celebrated the good fortune of the “lucky Japanese boy.”

No, the harshest attacks against Hosono came from his own countrymen. For in surviving the
Titanic
disaster, he had broken two cultural taboos. Not only had Hosono chosen ignominious life over an honorable death, he had done so
in public
—on a European passenger liner with the eyes of the world upon him.

Hosono was denounced as a coward by Japanese newspapers and fired from his job with the Transportation Ministry. The ministry hired him back a few weeks later, but his career never recovered. College professors denounced him as immoral, and he was written up in Japanese textbooks as a man who had disgraced his country. There were even public calls for him to commit
hara-kiri
—ritual suicide—as a means of saving face.

Hosono never did kill himself, but there must have been times when he wished he’d died on the
Titanic
. He never spoke of the experience again, and forbade any mention of it in his home. After he died in 1939, a broken and forgotten man, his letter to his wife, written on what is believed to be the only surviving piece of
Titanic
stationery, sat in a drawer until 1997, when the blockbuster film
Titanic
staged its Tokyo premiere. Then the Japanese public’s interest in the doomed liner’s lone Japanese passenger was renewed again, this time with much more sympathy.

On April 14, 1912, the
Titanic
struck an iceberg and sank, killing more than 1,500 people. This is the lavish meal served that night to the ship’s first-class passengers…which, for many, would turn out to be their last
.

First Course

Various hors d’oeuvres, oysters

Second Course

Consommé Olga (beef broth, port, celery, leeks, carrots, gherkins) Cream of Barley Soup

Third Course

Poached Salmon with Mousseline Sauce (hollandaise with whipped cream) and Cucumbers

Fourth Course

Filet Mignon Lili (steak served on baked potato slices and topped with artichoke pieces, foie gras, truffle slices, and a veal reduction sauce) Sauté of Chicken Lyonnaise (an onion, white wine, and veal sauce) Vegetable Marrow Farci (stuffed squash)

Fifth Course

Lamb with Mint Sauce, Roast Duckling with Apple Sauce Sirloin of Beef with Château Potatoes (potato nuggets cooked in butter) Green Peas, Creamed Carrots, Boiled Rice, or Parmentier (potato soup)

Sixth Course

Punch Romaine (white wine, rum, sugar syrup, and citrus juices)

Seventh Course

Roast Squab (young pigeon) and Cress

Eighth Course

Cold Asparagus Vinaigrette

Ninth Course

Pâté de foie gras with celery

Tenth Course

Waldorf Pudding, Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly, Chocolate and Vanilla Eclairs, or French Ice Cream

South America’s largest country turns out to have some of the world’s strangest news items
.

U
P, UP, AND AWAY
In April 2008, Father Adelier Antonio di Carli, a Catholic priest, took off from the coastal city of Paranagua in a specially designed chair strapped to 1,000 helium-filled party balloons. Although he had a parachute, a GPS device, and plenty of food and water…he was never seen again. The eccentric priest was trying to raise money for a “spiritual rest stop for truckers.”

Mayor Elcio Berti of Bocaiuva do Sul banned the sale of condoms in any of the town’s stores in 1998 because, he said, he was concerned that the availability of birth control might result in the town suffering a reduction in population. The law was struck down as unconstitutional, so Berti did something that he thought would counteract condom sales—he spent $35,000 of his own money on Viagra and gave it away to any men in the city who wanted it.