Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (15 page)

Some Arctic and Antarctic fish have proteins in their blood that act as antifreeze.

Hazel caused a record 18-feet-high storm surge along the North Carolina coast, destroying hundreds of buildings and killing more than a dozen people. More records were set as winds gusted over 130 mph, damaging thousands of homes and knocking down whole forests. Crossing into Virginia, Hazel wrenched the battleship USS
Kentucky
from its moorings and ran it aground in the James River. Continuing north, the winds blasted through Washington, D.C., at 98 mph. Crossing into Pennsylvania, the storm killed 26 people across the state with flash floods and 94-mph winds. But as Hazel approached the Pennsylvania–New York line, its winds fell to less than 40 mph again and the rainfall tapered off dramatically. Hazel was now face-to-face with the Allegheny Mountains, one of the highest ridges in the Appalachian chain. As the hurricane began grinding itself against the 1,500-foot-tall barrier, meteorologists were once again confident that they had seen the last of Hazel.

IT AIN’T OVER ’TIL IT’S OVER

Then, like two obliging Boy Scouts pushing an overweight woman over a stone wall, two adjoining weather systems helped Hazel over the Alleghenies. A low-pressure system over central New York State pulled Hazel north and west, while a high-pressure system from the Midwest gave the storm a push from behind.

Twenty-one more people died from drowning, car accidents, and electrocution from downed power lines as Hazel moved across New York State. But the storm was definitely losing power every mile it moved north. As Hazel moved out over the Great Lakes, it was officially demoted from a “hurricane” to a “severe storm.” Once more, meteorologists predicted the end of the storm. Once more they were wrong.

A few miles across the border in Toronto, Ontario, residents watched Hazel’s approach with interest but not alarm. After all, Toronto was hundreds of miles from the ocean. Torontonians were used to massive snow storms in winter and blistering heat waves in summer…but hurricanes? The morning papers all predicted that Hazel would pass directly over the city. The official forecast said: “rain tonight.”

Food for thought: Every year, about 8,000 people die from food poisoning in the U.S.

Throughout the day, rain fell fast and hard on Toronto. Some basements flooded and some roof shingles flew, but still no one paid much attention to the storm. When the rain stopped at around 10 p.m., most people thought Hazel was finished. Winds had knocked out telephone and power lines, so many people went to bed early. What they didn’t know was that in less than eight hours, Hazel had deposited more than 300 million tons of water just north of the city. The rain landed on farm fields already saturated from a previous week of rain. Unable to be absorbed into the soil, the water began rolling south toward Toronto.

ROLLIN’ ON THE RIVER

Toronto is a city built on river ravines. Just before midnight, people living in homes and trailers in those ravines heard a rumble. Looking out their windows, they were astonished to see normally placid streams and creeks suddenly burst over their banks and come rushing straight at their homes. Many people escaped their homes, but more than 80 people died as their homes, cars, and even a Sherman tank were swept down the rivers.

The next day the military was called out to search the valleys for survivors. There were few. What they found instead were bodies—some buried under four feet of silt and others caught in tree branches 20 feet off the ground. A few bodies, swept out into Lake Ontario, were recovered days later near Syracuse, New York.

Hazel continued moving north, eventually passing through the Arctic and finally petering out over Scandinavia.

SILVER LINING

There will never be another Hazel. Meteorologists officially retired the name out of respect for the families who suffered because of the storm.

The people of Toronto now know that hurricanes
can
attack their city. City planners use Hazel’s high water lines as a benchmark for zoning. Land below the water line is zoned as parkland; no one is allowed to build homes or live there. So, from all the devastation Hazel caused, it brought at least one bit of good: Toronto now has one of the largest interconnected park and wildlife sanctuary systems in the world.

Kayaking is a required subject in Greenland’s schools.

THE FABULOUS FLYING FLEA

If you designed and built your own airplane, would you name it after a small, bloodsucking insect? Believe it or not, one man did
.

U
PS AND DOWNS
One day during World War I, a young French soldier named Henri Mignet talked an airplane mechanic into letting him climb into the cockpit of an airplane and taxi down the runway.

Taxiing an airplane is simple enough, even for people (like Mignet) with no flying experience. But rather than stop at the end of the runway as he’d been told, Mignet gunned the engine and tried to fly the plane. He managed to get airborne but not for long: moments later both he and the plane were on their backs in a nearby cornfield.

JUST PLANE NUTS

Mignet was sent back to his unit and punished for wrecking the plane. Maybe he never lived down the humiliation, or maybe he bumped his head harder than people thought. Whatever the case, he spent the rest of his life trying to prove that the accepted scientific principles of aviation were a sham, and that people who built planes were liars and con men. He set out to prove that ordinary people could build airplanes themselves, without any help from the so-called experts.

In 1928 he wrote an article titled “Is Amateur Aviation Possible?” for a French aviation magazine. The timing couldn’t have been better. Charles Lindbergh’s famous flight from New York to Paris in May 1927 had generated huge worldwide interest in aviation, and Mignet’s article told people exactly what they wanted to hear: that they could build their own airplane for next to nothing and learn to fly it themselves. “It is not necessary to have any technical knowledge to build an aeroplane,” Mignet wrote. “If you can nail together a packing crate, you can construct an aeroplane.”

The article generated so much attention that Mignet followed up with a second article, including diagrams that people could use to build an airplane he called the HM 8.

In 1959 sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke bet that man would land on the moon by June 1969. He won. (Or did he? See
page 278
.)

Like the first seven planes he’d designed (and given his initials), number 8 could not actually fly. But Mignet’s readers didn’t know that—and he wouldn’t admit it—and anyway he kept designing new planes, even after serious aviators banned him from local airfields.

By 1935 Mignet had progressed all the way to HM 14, which actually could fly a little. He named the aircraft
Pou du Ciel
(Sky Louse) and published his plans in a book called
Le Sport de l’Air
. The English edition was titled
The Flying Flea
. (Why name his creations after lice and fleas? Because, Mignet proudly explained, like his designs, these insects “made people scratch their heads.”)

ON A WING AND A PRAYER

Built from wood scraps, held together by nails and glue, powered by an old motorcycle engine, and resembling “a coffin with an outboard motor in front,” Mignet’s Sky Louse lacked many features of conventional airplanes—ailerons, rudder pedals, engine cowls—that were necessary for safe flight but that he found offensive. “I cut them out!” he exclaimed. “No more sheet metal which flies off or rattles!” Mignet
did
like wings, so he gave his plane an extra set behind the cockpit.

People in Europe and the United States bought copies of Mignet’s book by the thousands, and many of these enthusiasts built their own Sky Lice in their garages and barns. Thankfully, Mignet’s designs were so awful (and his admirers so inept) that not many of these planes ever left the ground. Those few pilots unlucky enough to take to the air soon learned that Mignet’s design had a fatal flaw—if they sent a Sky Louse into a steep enough dive, it either locked into the straight-down position or flipped upside down and locked into
that
position until the pilot ran out of gas or crashed.

Mounting casualties ended the Sky Louse craze by the late 1930s, but they didn’t kill the movement entirely. In fact, Mignet’s admirers are still at it: amateur aeronautic engineers in Europe, America, Australia, and New Zealand are still building—and flying—Flying Fleas today.

THE WHO?

Ever wonder how bands get their names? So do we. After some digging around, we found the stories behind these famous names
.

G
ENESIS.
Named by producer Jonathan King, who signed the band in 1967. He chose the name because they were the first “serious” band he’d produced and he considered signing them to mark the official beginning of his production career.

HOLE.
Named after a line in the Euripides play
Medea
: “There’s a hole burning deep inside me.” Singer Courtney Love chose it because she says, “I knew it would confuse people.”

THE BLACK CROWES.
Originally a punk band called Mr. Crowe’s Garden (after singer Chris Robinson’s favorite kid’s book). They later shortened the name and switched to southern rock.

AC/DC.
Chosen because it fit the band’s “high-voltage” sound.

CREAM.
Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker chose the name because they considered themselves the cream of the crop of British blues musicians.

THE CLASH.
A political statement to demonstrate the band’s antiestablishment attitude? No. According to bassist Paul Simonon: “I was looking through the
Evening Standard
with the idea of names on my mind, and noticed the word
clash
a few times. I thought The Clash would be good.”

GUNS N’ ROSES.
The band chose Guns N’ Roses by combining the names of two bands that members had previously played in: L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose.

ELTON JOHN.
Born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, he joined the backing band for blues singer Long John Baldry. Dwight later changed his name by combining the first names of John Baldry and saxophonist Elton Dean.

THE O’JAYS.
Originally the Triumphs, they changed their name to the O’Jays in 1963 to honor Eddie O’Jay, a Cleveland disc jockey who was the group’s mentor.

“I’ve got all the money I need…if I die by 4 o’clock this afternoon.” —Henny Youngman

JANE’S ADDICTION.
According to band legend, Jane was a hooker and heroin addict whom the band members met (and lived with) in Hollywood in the mid-1980s.

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS.
Named after an obscure 1971 B-movie starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward.

DAVID BOWIE.
David Robert Jones changed his last name to Bowie to avoid being mistaken for Davy Jones of the Monkees. He chose Bowie after the hunting knife he’d seen in American films.

BAD COMPANY.
Named after the 1972 Western starring Jeff Bridges.

THE POGUES.
Began as Pogue Mahone, which is Gaelic for “kiss my arse.”

ELVIS COSTELLO.
Born Declan MacManus, he changed his name at the urging of manager Jake Riviera. According to Costello: “It was a marketing scheme. Jake said, ‘We’ll call you Elvis.’ I thought he was completely out of his mind.” Costello is a family name on his mother’s side.

THE B52S.
Not named after the Air Force jet.
B52
is a southern term for tall bouffant hairdos, which the women of the band wore early in the band’s career.

THE POLICE.
Named by drummer Stewart Copeland as an ironic reference to his father, Miles, who had served as chief of the CIA’s Political Action Staff in the 1950s.

MÖTLEY CRÜE.
Comes from Motley Croo, a band that guitarist Mick Mars worked for as a roadie in the early 1970s. According to bassist Nikki Sixx, they changed the spelling and added the umlauts because they “wanted to do something to be weird. It’s German and strong, and that Nazi Germany mentality—‘the future belongs to us’—intrigued me.”

RADIOHEAD.
Originally called On A Friday (because they could practice only on Fridays), EMI signed them in 1992. But EMI execs feared that On A Friday might be confusing to some. So the band quickly chose a new name. Their inspiration: an obscure Talking Heads song called “Radio Head.”