Free Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader® by Bathroom Readers’ Institute Page B

1780s.
Doublespeak: Hummingbirds have split tongues. Hairs between the two halves draw in nectar.
    SARCASTIC FRINGEHEAD: These bizarre-looking, huge-mouthed, ferociously territorial fish make their homes in abandoned seashells along the west coast of North America. It’s called “sarcastic” because of its temperamental nature, and “fringehead” because of the eyebrow-like appendages over its eyes. (Never heard of a sarcastic fringehead? Neither had we, but we liked the name so much that we just had to include it in this list.)
    MANTA RAY: Rays are a flat, seemingly winged species of fish, closely related to sharks. They’ve been called “rays” in English since the 1300s, a derivation of their Latin name, raia —though why exactly they were called that is lost to history. (Etymologists say it is unrelated to the root words for “ray” as in “ray of light,” “radius,” or any other similar words.) Manta rays are the largest of all ray species. The Romans called them mantellum , the word for “cloak,” after the manta ray’s broad and flat body. That became “manta” in Spanish, and that came to English in around 1760.
    SOLE: This is a name used for many types of ocean-going flat-fish —fish with wide, flat bodies, like flounder. The name came to English in the 1300s and traces its way back to the Latin solea , which originally meant “sandal.” ( Solea is also the root of the sole of your shoe or foot.)

    WHAT ARE...PANTS?
    Just prior to the “Ultimate Tournament of Champions” game in 2005, Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek was informed that the three finalists were nervous, so they all decided to play the game without wearing any pants, just to ease the tension. They requested that out of solidarity, Trebek do the same. So he walked out onto the stage in his boxer shorts, only to discover that the contestants—Brad Rutter, Ken Jennings, and Jerome Vered— were wearing pants...and big smiles. Trebek turned around, walked back to his dressing room, and put on his pants.
In the 20th century, more than 3 million people died in earthquakes.

BATHROOM NEWS
Here are a few fascinating bits of bathroom news that we’ve flushed out from around the world .
    I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND(LE)
In the early 1970s, John Lennon had an antique china toilet replaced at Tittenhurst Park, the English country home where he lived from 1969 to 1972. When the plumber, whose name was John Hancock, asked Lennon what he wanted to do with the old toilet, the ex-Beatle reportedly told him to “use it as a plant pot.” Hancock held on to John’s john for the rest of his life (no word on whether he ever used it as a flower pot), and when Hancock died in 2010, his heirs put it up for auction during Liverpool’s annual Beatles Week festivities. It sold for $14,740, about 10 times what auction organizers expected. “It’s the most unusual item we’ve ever had,” said auction spokesperson Anne-Marie Trace.
    CRAPPER IN THE RYE
    At about the same time John Lennon’s old commode went under the gavel, a North Carolina collectibles dealer named Rick Kohl acquired a toilet once owned by J.D. Salinger, author of the 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye , and put it up for auction on eBay. Asking price: $1 million. But unlike Lennon, Salinger was reclusive, and although he is believed to have continued writing until shortly before his death in January 2010, he published nothing after 1965, seeing even the publication of his own work as a violation of his privacy. When they learned of the listing, Salinger’s family members found it hard to imagine that he would want to see his toilet sold at public auction. They sued to block the sale, and won. Kohl surrendered the throne and was reimbursed the $2,000 he paid for it.
    IRON CHEF
    In March 2009, a housing unit of Washington State’s Clallam Bay Corrections Center was evacuated when a guard noticed smoke pouring out of a sewer vent pipe. One hundred and thirty inmates had to evacuate their