Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® by Michael Brunsfeld Read Free Book Online

spent a single day in school in his entire life. In 1827, the 19-year-old tailor married 16-year-old Eliza McCardle. Every night, after supper, Mrs. Johnson taught her husband how to read and write.
    First Lady: Patricia Ryan Nixon, wife of Richard M. Nixon
    Notable First: The first First Lady to visit an overseas combat zone
    Background: “Visit” may be a slight overstatement. During the Nixons’ 1969 trip to South Vietnam, Pat Nixon flew over the troops in an open helicopter.
    First Lady: Florence Kling Harding, wife of Warren G. Harding
    Notable First: The first First Lady to vote
    Background: Women were granted the right to vote in August of 1920—perfect timing for Florence Harding, a strong supporter of Women’s Suffrage. A couple of months later she cast her first ballot (presumably) for her husband Warren, who won the election by a landslide.
    high cheekbones, she had her upper molars removed.

MOW ’EM DOWN
    You’d be surprised how many times lawnmowers find their way into the news for one reason or another. Here’s just a few of the “clippings” that we’ve collected over the years.
O BI-LAWN KENOBI
    In 2000 the German garden equipment maker Wolf-Garten introduced a prototype of the first mower in the world that cuts grass using lasers instead of blades. Called the Zero, the mower uses a computer-guided array of four powerful lasers capable of cutting grass to an accuracy of one millimeter. And that’s only the beginning—a stream of air then mixes the zapped blades with fertilizer before dumping them back on the lawn. The mower comes complete with a leather seat, CD player, and even Internet access. Estimated retail price when the commercial model hits the market in 2002: $30,000.
A MORE NATURAL APPROACH
    Scientists at Australian National University prefer a more lowtech approach: They’ve introduced the Rolling Rabbit Run, the world’s first lawnmower powered entirely by rabbits. Constructed from bicycle wheels, chicken wire, and buckets, the device is basically a cylindrical rabbit cage that rolls around on the lawn as the rabbits eat the grass and fertilize it “naturally.” Perfecting the mower took a little longer than expected because scientists couldn’t get the rabbits to roll the cage on their own. They finally solved the problem by replacing the original pair of rabbits—one male, one female—with two males, after discovering that the male and the female kept stopping to mate.
LAWN JOCKEY
    In 1997, 12-year-old Ryan Tripp of Beaver, Utah, hopped onto his dad’s riding lawnmower and set out for Washington, D.C., more than 3,000 miles away. He made the trip (with his parents’ permission) to raise money for a four-month-old girl in his town who needed a liver transplant. Ryan arrived in Washington 42 days later, shattering the record for the world’s longest trip on a lawnmower. Still, not everything went according to plan: Tripp had hoped to mow the White House lawn upon his arrival, but he couldn’t get permission and had to settle for mowing a patch of grass at the U.S. Capitol. Bonus: He got to skip five weeks of school.
    Why isn’t iron added to milk? Iron-fortified milk turns coffee green.
THE LAWN ARM OF THE LAW
    • In 1992 author Stephen King sued to have his name removed from
Stephen King’s Lawnmower
Man, a film based on his short story by the same name. King’s suit alleged that the movie bore no resemblance to his original story—the tale of a man who “cuts his lawn by eating it, and is ultimately swallowed by a lawnmower.”
    • In December 1999 Sacramento, California, police were called to the residence of one Francis Karnes, 39, after neighbors reported hearing shots fired. They arrived several minutes later. Sure enough, Karnes had indeed fired off a few shots—at his lawnmower, after it refused to start. He was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment; no word on whether the mower survived the assault.
    • In March 1995, an unidentified 54-year-old