The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader For decades rumors have swirled around the CIA’s testing of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in the 1960s. In seeking a knockout drug weapon, did the CIA slip substances to unsuspecting patsies? The answer is yes. And Frank Olson was the man who paid the heaviest price. BEHIND CLOSED DOORS The […]

Providing a unique wrinkle to the phrase, “throw the bums out of office,” twice, first in 1419 and again in 1618, frustrated citizens of Prague (today in the Czech Republic) literally threw their leaders out of the upper story windows of their public buildings. The word for throwing someone or something out of a window, defenestration, is also sometimes used […]

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader We’ve all heard of the Ford Model T—but we rarely hear about the earlier automobiles in the whole “model-letter” scheme. So hear you go… ALPHABET CITY In 1908, the Ford Motor Company, founded by Henry Ford just five years earlier, released its first Ford Model T—and the world has never […]

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader When East Germany passed into history in 1990, the newly reunited Germany happily set about removing every last vestige of the old Soviet-dominated police state. If you visit the capital city of Berlin today, you’ll find very few signs that the old country ever existed…until you try to cross the […]

The M247 Sergeant York was officially designated as a “self-propelled anti-aircraft gun” but was for all intents and purposes a tank chassis with anti-aircraft guns attached to the top. The vehicle was named for one Alvin York, a famous and highly decorated WW1 hero who captured over 100 German soldiers pretty much single handedly. Unfortunately for the U.S. tax payers […]

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader SHOCK WAVE In September 1949, a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane flying over the North Pacific from Japan to Alaska detected levels of radioactivity in the atmosphere at least 20 times above normal. Other planes in the Pacific reported similar observations in the days that followed; elevated radiation levels were […]

It was presumably a cold, wintry February day in the United States capital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (the capital would not move to DC until 1800) when President George Washington put pen to paper and signed the Postal Service Act of 1792.  While a rudimentary colonial mailing service had been around since for nearly a century and a half, this new law […]

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? In 1985, Bary Bertiger, an engineer with the high-tech giant Motorola, had an intriguing idea: If a company could put enough low-orbit satellites in the air to attain direct access to the entire surface of the Earth, and use that network to support a satellite […]

Whether it’s flying tanks , literal bat bombs, surprisingly effective pigeon guided missiles, chicken heated nuclear weapons, or dogs that are trained to gruesomely take down tanks, humans have been using animals in war in a variety of bizarre ways. Today we’re here to talk about yet another seemingly absurd animal war-time event of the 20th century that actually turned […]

Jeremy asks: Why do we drop the ball on New Year’s eve in Times Square? When Adolph Ochs purchased the floundering New York Times in 1896, he made it his mission to make the newspaper the number one paper in all of New York. He started by forming the New York Times Company and made himself the majority owner, ensuring […]