Read Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader for Free Online Page B

shape to a tangerine, but with a flavor that’s stronger than a lemon.
    Lychee: The lychee looks so much like a nut that it’s also known as the lychee nut. Beneath the brown, bumpy shell is a clear or white fruit, said to taste like grapes and cherries drizzled with honey.
    Durian: A green prickly fruit from Southeast Asia that looks like a hand grenade and smells like stinky feet. It tastes so good that it’s known as the “king of fruits.”
    Celeriac: A root that looks like a turnip or a rutabaga, but tastes like celery.
    Pomelo: A green thick-skinned cousin of the grapefruit. It’s not as juicy as a grapefruit, but it can grow as large as a basketball.
    Scorzonera: A dark, almost black vegetable that has a taste and texture similar to an artichoke.
    Chayote: A pear-shaped light-green vegetable that tastes like a cross between an apple and a cucumber.
    Kiwano: Also known as the African horned cucumber and the jelly melon, the kiwano is a yellow-orange, oblong, spiky fruit with lime-green flesh that looks like kiwi fruit but tastes like a mix of lemon, banana, and cucumber.
Myth-information: The actual communication from Apollo 13 was “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

RESEARCH SHOWS…
Unusual findings from the world of science .
    F IDGETING MAKES YOU THINNER. In 2005 researchers at the Mayo Clinic put special movement sensors in 20 subjects’ underwear. Ten described themselves as “fidgety”; the other 10 were “couch potatoes.” Finding: Fidgety people are less likely to be obese; their extraneous movements burn an average of 350 calories a day, which could work off 10 to 30 pounds a year.
    THINKING MAKES YOU STRONGER. Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic found that imagining doing exercises (but not doing them) actually boosted muscle strength. The study: They had one group of people imagining moving their pinky muscles for 15 minutes a day for 12 weeks, and another group doing nothing. At the end of the study the second group showed no change, but the first group had a 35% increase in pinky strength.
    HELL ISN’T SO HOT AFTER ALL. A 2005 “study” determined the temperatures of Heaven and Hell. First, citing Isaiah 30:26, which says that in Heaven “the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days,” they did the math and found that heaven would be 525°C, or 977°F. For Hell they used Revelations 21:8, which describes a “lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” Their calculations determined that a lake of molten brimstone (sulphur) must be at or below its boiling point, around 445°C, or 833°F. The study’s conclusion: “Heaven is hotter than Hell.”
    SPOONS HAVE LEGS. Scientists at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, Australia, secretly numbered 70 teaspoons at the facility and tracked their movements over a five-month period. Result: 80% vanished. They said the teaspoons may have disappeared through counterphenomenological resistentialism , a belief that inanimate objects have a natural aversion to humans. Or, they said, the spoons may have slipped away to a planet populated by “spoonoid” life forms (they really said that). They also said that people could have simply taken them.

THE PILGRIMS, PT. I: A CHURCH DIVIDED
This article started as a short list of facts about the Mayflower, the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America in 1620. But after doing a little research, we found ourselves immersed in a much more fascinating story than we anticipated—the tale of the Pilgrims’ journey to the New World and religious freedom. Here’s Part I, which begins more than a century before the Pilgrims ever set sail .
    U NHOLY ROMANS
    Most modern democracies regard freedom of religion as a basic human right, but if you lived in Europe in the late Middle Ages, it was a very different story. The Roman Catholic Church was the state church in most of Western Europe. Although there were periods of tolerance for other