Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader Read Free Page A

fried in bread crumbs and a light batter. Birds-eye switched to cheaper fish (cod), fried it in a heavier batter, and scored a hit: If you had a freezer in the 1930s, more likely than not it contained a box or two of fish sticks.
There are roughly 1,300 kernels in a pound of corn.
    LICORICE ALLSORTS
    You might not recognize these candies by name, but you’d know them by sight—they’re the variety of licorice candies that are sold as a mixture of colors, shapes, and sizes. The candies were created by the Bassetts company of England in the late 1800s. The original plan was to sell each shape separately, but that plan was foiled in 1899 when a salesman named Charlie Thompson spilled a carefully arranged tray of the pieces during a sales call. The buyer actually preferred the candies all mixed up…and as it turned out, so did everyone else: The candies sold better as a mixture than they ever did individually.
    WISH-BONE SALAD DRESSING
    When Phillip Sollomi returned from fighting in World War II in 1945, he opened a restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri. The house specialty was fried chicken, so he named the restaurant “The Wish-bone.” In 1948 he started serving his mother’s Sicilian salad dressing; it was so popular that customers asked for bottles to take home. So he started bottling it…and soon demand was so strong that he had to make it in batches of 50 gallons at a time. In 1957 he sold the salad dressing business to the Lipton Tea Company, and today Wish-Bone is the bestselling Italian dressing in the United States.
    CORN DOGS
    Even if he wasn’t the very first person to dip a hot dog in corn meal batter and deep fry it, Neil Fletcher was the guy who popularized the dish when he began selling it at the Texas State Fair in 1942. Those early dogs were served on plates; it wasn’t until four years later that Ed Waldmire, a soldier stationed at the Amarillo Airfield, became the first person to put the corn dog on a “stick” (the first ones were actually metal cocktail forks, later replaced by wooden sticks).
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    Alternative energy: A 2006 study found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study found that Americans drink an average of 22 gallons of beer a year. That means that, on average, Americans get about 41 miles per gallon.
Mark Twain received a patent for “improved suspenders” in 1871.

LOST ATTRACTIONS
As a kid growing up in New Jersey, Uncle John often went to Palisades Amusement Park. Then one day they announced they were tearing it down to build an apartment complex. Many areas have an attraction like that—it’s an important part of the cultural landscape for decades…and then it’s gone .
    A TTRACTION: The Hippodrome
LOCATION: New York City
STORY: When it opened in 1905, it was called “the largest theater in the world.” With a seating capacity of 5,300, only the biggest acts—in both size and popularity—performed there: Harry Houdini, diving horses, the circus, 500-person choirs. But the daily upkeep for such a mammoth theater, coupled with the cost of staging huge shows, forced a change. In 1923 it became a vaudeville theater and then, in 1928, it was sold to RKO and turned into a movie theater. It then became an opera house. Then a sports arena. The Hippodrome was finally torn down in 1939.
    WHAT’S THERE NOW: An office building and parking garage.
    ATTRACTION: Aquatarium
    LOCATION: St. Petersburg, Florida
    STORY: Housed in a 160-foot-tall transparent geodesic dome, the 17-acre Aquatarium opened in 1964. Tourists came from far and wide to visit this aquarium, which overlooked the Gulf of Mexico and was home to porpoises, sea lions, and pilot whales. But it rapidly started losing customers—and money—when the bigger and better Walt Disney World opened in nearby Orlando in 1971. In 1976 sharks were brought in and the site was renamed Shark World to capitalize on the popularity of Jaws , but it didn’t help.
    WHAT’S THERE