The Mystery of Seattle’s Mystery Coke Machine
Seattle has long been a proudly weird place, but one of its weirdest elements is a vending machine. Really. Here is the mysterious story of Seattle’s mystery Coke machine.
Weird, Wonderful World
AUJA – Tony’s Tony and Oscar’s Oscar
Only one person named Oscar has ever won an Academy Award, nicknamed “Oscar” by an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences librarian who remarked that the bald statuette resembled her Uncle Oscar.
AUJA – Why are weathermen called meteorologists?
Like the names of many scientific disciplines, “meteorologist” comes from Ancient Greek. The study of weather study kept the name meteorology, and now means a study of the atmosphere, weather, and climate.
7 Things You Didn’t Know About Coca-Cola
It’s one of the oldest and most distinctively American products…but how much do you really know about Coke?
- Coca-Cola inventor John Pemberton, a trained doctor, served in the Civil War…for the Confederate Army. He made it to the rank of colonel, and in combat he suffered a wound that left him addicted to morphine. He created Coca-Cola as a way to break himself (and he presumed, many others) of that addiction. It worked, although in the 19th century, Coca-Cola contained both alcohol and cocaine, with the former phased out the latter ultimately replaced with caffeine.
AUJA – Who is John Doe?
Until their identity can be ascertained, crime victims or unknown suspects are usually referred to by police (and the media) as “John Doe” (for men) or “Jane Doe” (for women). Why are unidentified people referred to as “John Doe” or “Jane Doe”?
Dirty Pasta
Careful what kind of pasta you order, because you might just be inadvertently saying something dirty.
AUJA: Why is “Fido” a generic name for dogs?
Uncle John knows pretty much everything—and for what he doesn’t know, he has a massive research library. So go ahead: in the comments below, ask Uncle John anything. (And if we answer your question sometime, we’ll send you a free book!)
Why is “Fido” a generic name for dogs?
Ask Uncle John Anything
Uncle John knows pretty much everything—and for what he doesn’t know, he has a massive research library. So go ahead: in the comments below, ask Uncle John anything. (And if we answer your question sometime, we’ll send you a free book!)
Why Do People Call Coffee “Joe”?
Pour yourself a steaming cup of facts.
The phrase comes from the U.S. Navy in the early 20th century. A well-known origin story traces it to 1913. That year, President Wilson appointed Josephus Daniels to the position of Secretary of the Navy. He immediately made a number of reforms, notably banning alcohol from naval vessels. Sailors now had nothing on board stronger than coffee, which they derisively nicknamed “joe” after Daniels.
Who Cut the Cheese?
Would you eat cheese made out of bacteria from the human body?
Scent researcher Christina Agapakis, and Sissel Tolaas, a synthetic biologist, learned that microscopic ecosystems inside the human body are often very similar to the bacteria that makes cheese possible. So, with the cooperation of Stanford University and the University of Edinburgh, they followed this information to its natural conclusion: a product called Selfmade, which is “human cheese.”
Survey Time!
Dear loyal fans: We want to hear from you! We are constantly trying to improve the content we bring you on the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader website, and your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for taking the time to fill out the survey below. Survey will close on December 15, 2013. As always, go with the flow!
A Real Life Saver
The origin of a favorite stocking stuffer that was mostly accidental.
In the early 20th century, Clarence Crane ran a candy company in the Cleveland, Ohio, area. His top sellers were chocolate candies, but sales always plummeted during the summer months. Why? Chocolate melts. And in the 1910s, air conditioned stores were not the norm. Then Crane got an idea. Inspired by the hard mints popular in Europe and just beginning to be imported into the U.S., Crane created his “summer candy”—hard peppermint candies that were round and flat, to differentiate from the spherical European ones.
Launching Our New and Improved Store
The holidays are right around the corner and we have a very special gift for everyone this year: A BRAND NEW STORE! We think it’s a big upgrade on looks and a lot easier to use. Best of all, we can now offer Canadian shipping and most of our e-books! Now you can do all […]
Weird Thanksgiving Stories
It’s almost Thanksgiving—have you bought your robot turkey yet?
• In 2003, wildlife conservation officers in Michigan faced a spate of illegal turkey poachers. They didn’t call the Detroit police, one-time employer of Robocop—they brought in Robo Turkey. Several models of the $1,000 animatronic bird were placed in fields and woodlots around the state’s northern counties to protect wild turkeys. Robo Turkey looks like the real thing…from a distance. Officers can operate the bird via remote control to make him move around and shake his tail feathers, in order to attract illegal hungers. Robo Turkey has caught hundreds of poachers in the past decade.
5 Doughnuts From Around the World
If there’s one thing everybody can agree on, it’s doughnuts. It seems like every culture on earth has perfected some kind of sweetened and fried dough. Here are just a few doughnuts from around the world.
Pastry: Beignet
Country: France
Details: French cooks can make even a doughnut—simple dough, cooked in oil—seem fancy. “Beignet” is a deep-fried pastry made out of a versatile dough base called choux. Consisting of little more than butter, flour, eggs, and water, the same dough is used to make other French desserts, including éclairs and profiteroles. A beignet is usually rectangular, served hot, and topped with a mound of powdered sugar.
History of Halloween
Halloween is Uncle John’s favorite holiday. Why? It’s the one day of the year he looks “normal!” Here’s a quick history of Halloween.
ANCIENT ORIGIN
The ancient Celts in the British Isles celebrated their new year on November 1. Their New Year’s festival was called Samhain (pronounced sow-wen), which means “summer’s end.” Early Christians adopted the festival in the seventh century A.D., making November 1 a celebration of saints and martyrs—hence the name All Saints’ Day or All Hallows’ Day. (Hallow comes from an Old English word meaning “holy.”) The night before All Saints’ Day was known as All Hallows’ Even (evening)— which was shortened to “Hallowe’en.”
ANCIENT MYSTERY
What’s Halloween’s connection to ghosts and costumes? No one’s sure, but historians offer these three possibilites.
Theory #1: The Ghosts Are Hungry!
On All Hallows’ Eve, evil spirits roamed the Earth in wild celebration, ready to greet the arrival of “their season”— the cold dark winter. And just for fun, they liked to frighten mortals. One way for scared humans to escape the demons was to offer them food and sweets. Another way was to dress up like spirits and roam around with them…hopefully going unnoticed. “That is what the ancient Celts did,” explains Francis X. Weiser in The Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, “and it is in this very form that the custom has come to us.”
Return of the Attack of the Pumpkin-Flavored Food Monsters!
The leaves are changing color, the air is getting crisp, and everything at the grocery store suddenly has pumpkin in it, whether it works or not. It must be fall!
If you’ve been inside a grocery store or restaurant in the last couple of weeks, you’ve probably noticed the proliferation of pumpkin-flavored items. It’s been slowly building to cultural phenomenon levels since 2003. That’s when Starbucks introduced the Pumpkin Spice Latte—coffee, milk, and a syrup flavored with pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar. More than 200 million of the drinks have sold in the past 10 years, prompting other food manufacturers and sellers to unveil their own pumpkin-flavored concoctions. And it’s working: pumpkin products rake in more than $290 million every autumn.
The Better Soup and iPod You Didn’t Know You Needed
Stuff you didn’t think needed to be improved…just got a little bit better.
A better iPod
Introduced in 2001, Apple’s iPod revolutionized the way people listen to music—thanks to this and other digital music players, thousands of songs are stored as computer files on a pocket-sized device. But there’s one group who doesn’t like the easy access to music offered by the iPod: audiophiles. In order to get that much music on an iPod, the files are compressed, leading to some loss of layers and nuances in recordings. But a new high-definition, high-sound-quality music player called Pono is on the way—and it was invented by legendary rock star Neil Young. “We’ve liberated the music of the artist from the digital file and restored it to is original artistic quality, as it was in the studio,” Young wrote on Pono’s facebook page. Young announced the Pono player on The Late Show With David Letterman in 2012, and recently said that the player will be for sale in early 2014.
More convenient soup
One of the most popular new kitchen appliances in the past new years is the single-cup coffeemaker—17 million American homes and offices now have them. Keurig is the industry leader in these devices, which brew one cup of coffee—or tea, or hot chocolate—at a time. Consumers buy packages of individual “K-cups” full of ground coffee, which is placed in a chamber in the machine, where it’s then steeped in hot water, producing a hot beverage in about a minute. In September 2013, Keurig owner Green Mountain Coffee Roasters announced that it had made a deal with Campbell’s to produce K-cups…of soup. In 2014, consumers will be able to buy the two-step soup kits: a K-cup full of dried broth is placed in the machine. Hot water turns the dried broth into liquid broth, which is then poured over an included pack of noodles.
