Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader by Bathroom Readers’ Institute Read Free Book Online Page B

estimated the cost of a round-trip ticket to the moon—based on six cents a mile—at $28,000. “It will be the longest and most expensive commercial airline flight in history,” reported the New York Times. “But the first flight to the moon will also be the most in demand.”
     
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    Each year, more people are killed by bee stings than by sharks.
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    Membership cards for the First Moon Flights Club were issued to residents of every state and citizens of more than 90 countries. “The amazing thing you find,” one official told the Times , “is that most of these people are very serious about the whole idea.”
    ENOUGH, ALREADY
    By 1971, more than 30,000 people (including future president Ronald Reagan) had signed up. That’s when Pan Am decided to suspend reservations.
    Membership cards are a collector’s item today, and Pan Am is just a memory. In the 1980s, the company declared bankruptcy. Then in 1997, entrepreneurs bought the name and began operating a new airline as Pan Am; in 1998, they declared bankruptcy, too. A few months later, the name was transferred again...to a railroad. They have no moon flights planned.
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    PREDICTIONS FOR 2000
    Commuting: “However the [businessman of 2000] travels...he will not be obliged to handle the controls by himself. He may well be able to doze or read, while, from a distant point, his car or plane will be held on its course by short-wave impulses.”
    —Arthur Train, Jr., The Story of Everyday Things (1941)
    Home Life: “In the year 2000, we will live in pre-fabricated houses light enough for two men to assemble....[We’ll] cook in our television sets and relax in chairs that emit a private sound-light-color spectacular.”
    —New York Times , January 7, 1968
    Food: “The businessman in 1999 [will only need] a soup-pill or a concentrated meat-pill for his noonday lunch....Ice-cream pills [will be] very popular.”
    —Arthur Bird, Looking Forward (1903)
     
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    Barry Manilow wrote the “Stuck on Me” Band-Aid jingle.
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THE WORLD’S TALLEST BUILDINGS, PART I
    Last winter, Uncle John was reading a book on architecture (you know where he was). He was looking at a picture of the Empire State Building, and it suddenly occurred to him that everyone knows the building—but hardly anyone knows its history. His Bathroom Reader antennae went up—it sounded like a perfect subject for this edition. And here it is—an expanded version that includes other skyscrapers as well.
    H OW HIGH CAN YOU GO?
    Question: What was the invention that made tall buildings feasible? Answer: The elevator.
    In 1850, few buildings were taller than 4 stories tall. This was partly because construction materials and techniques weren’t suitable for tall buildings yet. But even if they had been, there was no reason to bother going any higher—no one would have wanted to walk up that many flights of stairs.
    The closest thing anyone had to an elevator was a hoist. This was simply a platform connected to ropes and a pulley that could be used to move heavy objects from one floor of a building to another. Guide rails running from floor to ceiling kept the hoist from swinging back and forth, but it was still very dangerous—if the rope broke, there was nothing to stop it from plummeting to the ground, killing anyone riding in it...or standing nearby. Accidents were common.
    MR. OTIS REQUESTS
    In 1852, the hoist at the Bedstead Manufacturing Company in Yonkers, New York, broke and the superintendent assigned a master mechanic named Elisha Graves Otis to fix it. Otis had seen many brutal mishaps with hoists....So he decided to add a safety feature to the one he was building.
     
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    Speed demon: The ruby-throated hummingbird’s heart beats 615 times per minute.
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    He took a spring from an old wagon and connected it to the top of the platform where the rope was tied. When the the rope was pulled taut, the spring was compressed. But if the