Mental Floss Presents Instant Knowledge Page 11

  PORT ROYAL

  (the sin-iest place on earth!)

  USEFUL FOR: barroom banter, bachelor party planning, and impressing any happy-go-lucky buccaneers you run into

  KEYWORDS: sin city, pirates, or “what happens in Vegas…”

  THE FACT: For all its debauchery, Vegas still can’t hold a candle to the original capital of British Jamaica, Port Royal, a.k.a. the most sinsational place on earth!

  It’s true: The area was a hotbed for pirates and Limey officials who were happy to look the other way—for a piece of the action. When pirate crews rolled into town they could enjoy a wide array of vice, including prostitutes, gambling, liquor, and drugs smuggled from the Orient and the Middle East. If that doesn’t sound like enough fun for you, the streets literally echoed with the sounds of sin: from ruckus brawls to the incessant nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence.” And just to prove how corrupt it was, Henry Morgan, an infamous pirate admiral, was actually made lieutenant governor of the Port in 1674. Of course, such dens of sin can’t last forever, and Port Royal was destroyed in 1692 by an earthquake that dropped three quarters of it into the sea. It seemed someone upstairs had a cross to bear against this humble burg.

  PREGNANCY

  (and the car-pool lane)

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, making friends at Lamaze class, and bringing up anytime you’re stuck in traffic

  KEYWORDS: knocked up, HOV lane, or traffic cop

  THE FACT: Can a pregnant woman drive in the car-pool lane? Expectant mothers, start your engines!

  In 1987, a pregnant California woman was ticketed for driving “by herself” in the car-pool lane. Sure, the citation was only for $52, but she sued anyway, contending that her five-month-old fetus constituted a second person. Lo and behold, the jury agreed with her, despite the prosecution’s argument that women could then just stuff pillows up their dresses to drive “car-pool” on California’s freeways. But, as it turns out, the California Highway Patrol took care of that concern, brushing off the case as a bunch of hooey. Verdict or not, officers said, they would continue to ticket solo drivers, even if they claimed to be pregnant.

  PRESIDENTIAL AFFAIRS

  (and good old Grover Cleveland)

  USEFUL FOR: election seasons, impressing your fourth-grade history teacher, and defending Grover Cleveland’s reputation

  KEYWORDS: Presidential affairs, scandals, or dillydallying

  THE FACT: In 1873, a young, politically aspiring bachelor named Grover Cleveland met Maria Halpin, a 35-year-old widow with two children. Apparently, he more than just liked her.

  Maria’s looks and personality made her the talk of Buffalo and Grover soon found himself among Halpin’s many suitors. Well, more than just a suitor. In 1874, Halpin bore a son and insinuated that old Grover was the pop. Grover, not intending to marry Maria, decided to do the right thing and bear financial responsibility for the child. During the 1884 presidential campaign, however, Cleveland’s opposition dug up the old story and printed it in the press. A number of clergy members supporting Cleveland did a study of the case and found that after the “preliminary offense” Cleveland had done the honorable thing. More important in their minds, he’d shielded many married men in Buffalo (and their families) from public scandal. Because of this, even many of Grover’s opponents supported his run for the presidency.

  PYGMY

  (in a zoo?)

  USEFUL FOR: barroom banter, impressing your history teacher, and shocking anyone fond of zoos

  KEYWORDS: pygmy, World’s Fair, or the Bronx

  THE FACT: In 1906, thousands of curious people were rushing to the Bronx Zoo in New York to see its newest and most “exotic” exhibit: a 4-foot, 11-inch African pygmy.

  The tragically exploited man, named Ota Benga, was a member of the Mbuti peoople of Zaire. Explorer Samuel Verner purchased him at a slave market to put him on display in the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. After, Ota Benga returned to Zaire, only to be rejected for being tainted by the white man. Verner brought Ota back, and presented him to the eccentric director of the Bronz Zoo, William T. Hornaday, who gladly agreed to “care for” him. Ota Benga was locked in the zoo’s monkey house and put on display with a few chimpanzees, a gorilla, and an orangutan as “ancient ancestors of man.” The exhibit rightfully sparked a wave of controversy from the African-American community and (interestingly) churchmen, who feared Ota Benga would convince people of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Fortunately, the pressure from such groups eventually forced Hornaday to release him.

  THE QUADRO

  (the littlest big fake)

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, barroom banter, and supporting that whole “sucker born every minute” argument

  KEYWORDS: fake, fraud, or The Music Man

  THE FACT: The Quadro Corporation of Harleyville, South Carolina, had an impressive client list: public schools, police agencies, theU.S. Customs office, and Inspector General’s office to name a few. But no one quite knows why.

  The product they sold was the top-of-the-line Quadro QRS 250G (also known as the Quadro Tracker, available for $1,000), and the company boasted its ability to find drugs, weapons, or virtually anything worth looking for. The small plastic box supposedly contained frequency chips of an advanced sort not known to “regular” science. Driven by static electricity, the Quadro would resonate at exactly the same frequency as the searched-for item. When the FBI opened the box, however, they found nothing inside. Quadro threatened to sue Sandia Laboratories when Sandia suggested that the device was fraudulent, but eventually Quadro became the bigger company and just closed its doors.

  QUOTES

  (and the guy who loved compiling them)

  USEFUL FOR: academic gatherings, impressing nerdy dates and people who love forwards

  KEYWORDS: Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations

  THE FACT: As anyone who’s worked retail can attest to, there’s often a lot of downtime, and John Bartlett no doubt experienced plenty while working at the Harvard University bookstore.

  But instead of gluing the pages of popular books together or locking coworkers in the lavatory, Bartlett spent his downtime compiling his book of Familiar Quotations, which was first printed in 1855. Filled with quotes from literature as ancient as the Old Testament and as quirky as the “Annals of Sporting,” Bartlett once said about them, “I have gathered a posie of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.” Throughout the continued success of his book (and subsequent editions), Bartlett joined the publishing firm of Little, Brown and Company in 1863 and became senior partner in 1878, where he never uttered the phrase “gathered a posie of other men’s flowers” ever again.

  RATS

  (in the courtroom)

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, making headway with a judge, and clearing the awkward silence after someone’s just told a lawyer joke

  KEYWORDS: rats, courtroom, really bad excuses

  THE FACT: Believe it or not, there was a time in European history when people actually used to take animals to court. In this case, the rats actually managed to land themselves an amazing attorney.

  When the French province of Autun’s barley began disappearing, the local rats were charged with stealing. When they failed to answer a summons (yes, really!), their appointed lawyer, Bartholomew Chassenée, argued that a single summons was invalid because the rats lived in different villages. New summonses were issued. This time Chassenée argued some of his clients were aged and infirm and needed more time. After that, he argued the rats were afraid to come to court because of all the cats along the way. When villagers refused to obey a court order to lock up their cats, charges against the rodents were dismissed. Chassenée later became France’s leading jurist. As for the dirty rats, they presumably returned to lives of crime.

  REVENGE

  (and one of the most one-sided battles of all time)

  USEFUL FOR: half-time shows, ballparks, and anytime you’re watching a team get slaughtered


  KEYWORDS: outmatch, crush, kill, bloodbath, or not really fair—even for love and war

  THE FACT: When the forces of British general Charles Gordon were surrounded and eventually destroyed by Islamic fundamentalist tribesmen at Khartoum, Sudan, in 1885, the blow to British prestige was tremendous. In fact, the British quickly decided not to get humiliated again.

  The imperialist nation was so embarrassed that it decided the event demanded a total and overwhelming response. To get revenge, the British shipped a well-trained army to fight the native Muslim rebels in central Sudan. But the army wasn’t just well trained, they were well armed and were even carrying Gatling guns—prototype machine guns that drew ammunition from a long straight clip filing through the firing chamber. The result at the battle of Omdurman in 1898 was decisive and horrendous, resulting in the slaughter of tens of thousands of native tribesmen with virtually no British casualties.

  RICHARD III

  (and Shakespeare’s knack for exaggerating)

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, academic gatherings, and making small talk during Shakespeare intermissions

  KEYWORDS: hunchback, Richard III, or bad PR

  THE FACT: Despite what everybody thinks, Richard III probably was not a hunchback. So why’d old Will Shakespeare depict him that way?

  To thrive as a playwright, Shakespeare needed to stay on the good side of his monarch, Elizabeth I. And since Queen Bess’s grandfather, Henry VII, had become king by defeating Richard III in battle, the queen had a family interest—and a personal stake—in seeing Richard remain a villain. Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, had previously commissioned a biography of Richard in which he was portrayed as physically and morally misshapen, and Shakespeare stuck to the script. Given the playwright’s skill, is it any wonder that the dramatic character of a hunchbacked bad guy caught on? Yet portraits painted during Richard’s lifetime showed no pronounced deformity.

  ROCK PAPER SCISSORS

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, chatting about extreme sports, and impressing everyone at recess

  KEYWORDS: rock, paper, or scissors

  THE FACT: From the playground to the annual RPS International World Championship (really, people, we’re not kidding), outwitting your opponent is job number one for serious competitors. Not getting injured from playing might be number two.

  According to the World RPS Society, one way to guess what hand someone will throw out is to know how many rounds they’ve won so far. Players who are in the lead will often use Scissors, because it’s believed to symbolize aggression, while Paper is used for a more subtle attack. Rock is usually a last resort, when players feel their strategies are failing. There are also techniques you can use to mask your move, such as cloaking, in which players will pretend to throw Rock and then stick out two fingers at the last second to make Scissors. But if you’re gonna play, be prepared to pay. In the late 1980s, Kenyan Mustafa Nwenge lost a match and the use of a finger when an overzealous opponent “cut his Paper” a little too zealously and crushed Nwenge’s finger ligaments. So what is it that beats hospital bill? Not playing with morons.

  ROGET

  (the name on your thesaurus)

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, academic gathers, and anytime you’re handing someone a thesaurus

  KEYWORDS: what’s another word for…

  THE FACT: You know his last name from the spine of your desk reference set, but did you know Peter Mark Roget was the Doogie Howser of the 1800s?

  By the age of 14, he was studying medicine at Edinburgh University in Scotland, and in his spare time, compiling a well-indexed catalog of fancy words that he used to enhance his medical and theoretical papers. In one such paper, the young brainiac (see also egghead, smarty-pants, Poindexter) described the optical illusion one witnessed when viewing a moving carriage through the blinds of a window, explaining the eye’s ability to fill in the missing frames. It was groundbreaking research that would later lead to the invention of motion pictures. Of course, it would be decades until such technology was available, so Roget had to fall back on that book of words he’d been keeping. Fortunately, that worked out pretty well for him, and Roget’s Thesaurus was born (i.e. sprouted, emerged, germinated).

  ROLLER COASTERS, PART I

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, Sunday school, and making conversation in really long lines at Six Flags

  KEYWORDS: you must be this tall…

  THE FACT: When Coney Island became overrun with beer halls, LaMarcus Thompson, a preacher, feared the demon liquor would send the souls of the beachgoers straight to hell, so he decided to give them something else to scream about.

  In 1884, Thompson shelled out $1,600 to open the Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway, an incredibly lame ride that maxed out somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 miles per hour. Nevertheless, it was an instant hit with easily entertained Victorians. Even at a mere five cents a ticket, Thompson regained his investment in less than three weeks. As the money rolled in, he gave up preaching anything but the gospel of roller coasters and went on to become the original coaster tycoon.

  ROLLER COASTERS, PART II

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, chatting up thrill seekers, and explaining to your kid why the coaster you just waited in line for 45 minutes to ride really was fast enough

  KEYWORDS: Can’t this thing go any faster?

  THE FACT: Not all early roller coasters were as dull as Coney Island’s first coaster, the Gravity Pleasure (which went a whopping 6 miles per hour). Of course, they weren’t as safe, either.

  In about 1895, a ride called the Flip-Flap Railway opened on Coney Island. It was arguably the world’s first loop-the-loop-style coaster, but with one key difference: The loops of the Flip-Flap were perfect circles. This doesn’t sound like a big problem…until you start considering physics. Modern coasters use elliptical loops and reach a maximum g-force of 6g’s. By contrast, in the tight circles of the Flip-Flap, passengers experienced up to 12g’s of gravitational force, which, coincidentally, is also the limit of force the human body can withstand. Many riders’ necks were snapped as they hung on for dear life to safety-belt-less wooden carts. Despite this hazard, the death coaster managed to remain open for eight years.

  instant personalities

  “Peanuts” creator CHARLES M. SCHULZ hated getting his hair clipped at his pop’s barbershop as a kid, because whenever “real” customers came in, he’d have to get up and walk around with only half a haircut. (Good grief!)

  SIR ISAAC NEWTON only made one recorded comment during his term as a member of British Parliament: He asked that someone open the window.

  By age 13 THELONIOUS MONK was so accomplished on the keys that the Apollo Theater banned him from the weekly amateur contest because he’d won too many times.

  RONALD MCDONALD

  (secret agent man)

  USEFUL FOR: barroom banter, drive-thru chatter, and anytime you spot a clown

  KEYWORDS: top secret, covert ops, or Happy Meal

  THE FACT: Who knew the CIA and McDonald’s had so much in common?

  McDonald’s execs, like their less delicious counterparts at the Central Intelligence Agency, uphold an intense policy of employee secrecy. Clowns who portray Ronald McDonald are strictly forbidden to disclose their identities. It’s also taboo for two (costumed) Ronalds to be in the same place at the same time. In fact, the only time they get together is at the biennial Ronald McDonald Convention, which, as you might imagine, is also very top secret. All of this helps maintain the image that Ronald, the second-most-recognizable figure worldwide (after Santa), is a single, magical character. There are, of course, many Ronalds—an estimated 250, in fact. Their average income is about $40,000 a year, but the busiest clowns can bring in as much as $100,000. The Ronald McDonald who appears in the company’s television commercials earns a salary of more than $300,000. We could tell you who he is, but we’d be risking a lifetime of toyless Happy Meals. Some things just aren’t worth the risk.

  SADDAM

  (and hi
s sweet tooth)

  USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, chatting with Desert Storm vets, and making people really curious about one of the world’s worst tyrants

  KEYWORDS: Saddam Hussein, chocolate, pizza party menu

  THE FACT: The bizarre contents of Saddam Hussein’s residences—velvet paintings of Elvis and all—have provided endless fodder for cocktail conversations, but none like his fridge.

  Amid the revelations of Saddam’s incredibly bad taste, it was also revealed that Saddam was a bit of a sugar fiend. In his last rather ignoble residence—the “spider hole” where he was finally apprehended in Ad Dawr in December 2003—American soldiers found a refrigerator filled with Mars and Bounty candy bars and 7-Up. Thank God! No longer relegated to the realm of middle school sleepovers and Little League pizza parties, these snack foods have finally broken through to a new demographic: dictators evading prosecution for crimes against humanity.

  THE SAFETY PIN

  USEFUL FOR: chatting with punks, moms who use natural diapers, and anyone who loves safety