The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? In 1985, Bary Bertiger, an engineer with the high-tech giant Motorola, had an intriguing idea: If a company could put enough low-orbit satellites in the air to attain direct access to the entire surface of the Earth, and use that network to support a satellite […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader It’s a good bet that after you read this article, you’ll start paying more attention to background props in movies. A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE It was Christmas Eve 2009. Gergely Barki, an art historian and researcher with the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, had settled in with his daughter Lola to […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Here’s the bizarre story of an anonymous artist so desperate to receive credit for his work that he took himself to court. THE MIRACLE OF MARIENKIRCHE On March 28, 1942, the German port city of Lübeck was nearly obliterated by Allied bombers during World War II. More than 230 British […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Just because you’re not an astronaut, that doesn’t mean you can’t contribute to the space program. You don’t even have to get out of bed. Meet the “pillownauts.” LOST IN SPACE Today we take it for granted that astronauts can function in the weightlessness of spaceflight, but at the dawn […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Here’s a piece of recent American history that most people have never heard of. It involves many of the elements we associate with modern life—cars, travel, eating, entrepreneurship…and discrimination. Here’s the story of the Green Book. ROAD TRIP! For as long as automobiles have been around, they have symbolized freedom […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Believe it or not, in the 1950s the U.S. seriously considered building a military base on the Moon. Why? As Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson later put it, so that Americans would never have to go to bed “by the light of a Communist Moon.” LOOK—UP IN THE SKY! Just […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader If the Transfermium Wars raged from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, how is it that so few people have ever heard of them? Because they were fought by rival groups of scientists over who would get to name newly discovered chemical elements. PARENT TRAP When someone discovers a […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe, there’s an 800-year-old chest filled with $2 million in treasure. Want to find it? Here’s the story of the man who hid it and the clues he’s given to help you find it. THE COLLECTOR Forrest Fenn was a kid […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader He wasn’t Elvis, but he wanted to be…and a lot of people even thought he might be. Here is the bizarre story of Jimmy Ellis, or, as he was also known, Orion. HEARTBREAK HOTEL By the time he was a teenager, it was clear that Jimmy Ellis had two talents: […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Calculus involves the study of limits. By the time they were done arguing about who had invented it, Isaac Newton and G. W. Leibniz had probably both reached their limit as well. Science has seen a number of simultaneous discoveries. Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry independently discovered electromagnetic induction. Charles […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader One measure of the desirability of a sports car is whether or not it has teenagers drooling over it before they’re even old enough to drive. Here’s the story of one of the most drool-worthy cars in auto history. (See how long it takes you to guess which car we’re […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Only 58 percent of the soldiers killed in action during the American Civil War were positively identified. Soldiers had a legitimate concern that if they were killed, their families would never know what happened to them—other than that they were missing in action. As a result, soldiers started writing their […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader In 1905, a painting shown in Paris shocked the public. Critics reviled it; religious and conservative moralists made speeches against it. The artist who painted it was vilified as a “wild beast” and a victimizer of women. But the painting could hardly be called pornographic. It wasn’t even a nude; […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader As they conquered their way through Europe, the Romans left behind a number of souvenirs, like the (still-standing) aqueducts that used to bring water to homes and businesses. But the Romans also established a system of sewers to dispose of, well, you know. The sewers consisted of a network of […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Let’s say you’re an 18th-century British peasant, and you and your wife just aren’t getting along anymore. What do you do? Divorce her? Too expensive. Kill her? Too risky. Oh, well, looks like you’ll have to auction her off. Welcome to the wacky world of wife selling! HARDY HAR-HAR Hands […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Conspiracy theories can be amusing to read because they’re usually so bizarre and far-reaching that they couldn’t possibly be true. What’s even more fun is a conspiracy that’s not a theory at all. Here’s one that actually happened. ALL THE RAGE IN EUROPE In the 1930s, many Western countries suffered […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader For nearly 20 years after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon in July 1969, the Soviet Union categorically denied having a manned lunar program of its own. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that we began to learn just how close they came to beating the United States to the […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Hey, youz! Whah do ‘mericuns have all differnt aks-ay-ents? It’s, like, totally confusing and somewhat bizzahh, dontcha know. TALK THIS WAY An accent is “a manner of pronunciation peculiar to a particular individual, location, or nation.” That’s not to be confused with a dialect, which is a specific form of […]
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