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 Americans call it soccer and the English call it football? The United […]
And we don’t mean “ha-ha” funny. Speed Fills (The Coffers) In 2004 the city of Coopertown, Tennessee, realized they had a law-enforcement problem: the cops were costing the city too much money. The Robertson County Times reported that the police department cost about $125,000 to run, but that they had given out only $17,000 worth […]
On a 1976 Lynyrd Skynyrd live album, singer Ronnie Van Zandt asks a restless audience, “what song is it you wanna hear?” and the crowd responds “Free Bird!” because they wanted to hear the band’s biggest hit. Now, it’s as much a concert tradition as going home with ringings ears to shout out “Play ‘Free […]
In 2016, Fox debuted a show called Pitch, a drama about the first female Major League Baseball player. It’s really not so far-fetched. Toni Stone Toni Stone landed a spot on the St. Paul Giants, a semiprofessional team, in 1936. Not only was she an African-American woman who landed a spot on a men’s team […]
It’s bizarre to think that the outcome of some of the most momentous events in Western history have hinged on one detail. But that’s the case. Here are four examples of what we mean. The American Revolution Near Miss: If, in 1776, a pro-British soldier had read a note instead of sticking it in his […]
Seafaring was a major foundation of the world economy in the 1700s and 1800s because of whaling. Hunting whales and processing their fat, teeth, and other parts into useful goods was extremely important and profitable. (So much so that whales are now mostly endangered.) Whaling is now banned virtually worldwide, but here’s a look back […]
It’s really hard to skate on ice and play a contact sport. It’s even harder to do these things while doing that. A goal in every possible way There are five different permutations or situations in which a player can score a goal in hockey. They are even strength (both teams have six skaters on […]
Even for creative types, it can be hard to come up with a good title. (Trust us – we make books for a living.) Here are some of the original names proposed for some of the most popular video games of all time…which might not have been so popular had those names been used. Sonic […]
There’s an old adage in Hollywood: “Never work with kids or animals.” These sports teams didn’t heed this message (well, the animal part), and found out what happens when a beast decides to act on its own. The Atlanta Flacon On September 11, 1966, the Atlanta Falcons took the field for the first time as […]
We’ve talked about strange beer flavors before—and we talked about them again in our book Beer-Topia—but all those craft brewers out there keep coming up with more and more bizarre beers. Here’s another round. Hvalur 2 Stedji Brewery is based in Iceland, where the population has traditionally lived off the land, or more accurately, the […]
There are lots of important pro basketball stats to track: points, rebounds, assists, and, of course, stab wounds. Most stab wounds to not affect play About a month before the start of the 2000-2001 season, Boston Celtics star Paul Piece went to the Buzz Club in Boston. A fight broke out, and Pierce tried to […]
Saving the princess, running from ghosts, and playing a plastic guitar can be hard work, so sometimes video gamers need something beyond a standard joystick. Super Scope The original Nintendo Entertainment System in the ’80s came packaged with a small handheld “light gun.” Used in a bunch of games, it allowed gamers to shoot at […]
Here’s the story of the very first pro football player. College Game Football was invented at Ivy League colleges in the 1870s, combining rugby with some other ball games popular at the time. For more than 50 years the college game was the dominant form of the sport, both in terms of the number of […]
On this day in 1933, the first ever American daytime serial, Marie, the Little French Princess, debuted on CBS Radio. “Soap operas,” as they came to be known on both radio, and eventually television, because sponsors were primarily cleaning products, have been a part of the cultural landscape ever since. Like “sands through the hourglass” […]
Some TV show titles make perfect sense—Friends is about some friends, and The Sopranos is about a family called the Sopranos, for example. Other titles are a bit harder to crack—like these. Dragnet Procedurals are a big part of TV today—formulaic crime shows in which police detectives dutifully go through all the steps they’re supposed […]
Today is a huge day in the world of video games. Nintendo releases its latest system the Switch, along with a new game in the Legend of Zelda series, Breath of the Wild, an incredibly ambitious game that took developers years to make. Here are some more fun facts about the world of Zelda. Game […]
These pages were contributed by Larry Kelp, whose picture has been on the back cover since the first Bathroom Reader. He’s a music writer in the San Francisco Bay Area and was Uncle Jon’s neighbor. I Want My MTV! In 1981 Robert Pittman, a 27-year-old vice president in charge of new programming at Warner-Amex, came […]
In the Catholic Church calendar, today marks the beginning of Lent. It’s 40-day period that precedes Easter (and follows Mardi Gras), and is a period of reflection and fasting. Along with it comes a rule that Catholics abstain from eating meat on Fridays during that period—but fish is fine. What technically constitutes “meat” is a […]
