Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader Read Online Free Page B

Ranger. The standout song was “El Paso,” a first-person story of a cowboy who falls in love with a Mexican dancer, kills his romantic rival, goes back for the girl, gets shot, and dies in her arms. Columbia Records refused to release it as a single—at five minutes long, it was nearly twice as long as the average hit song. But Gunfighter Ballads was selling briskly and radio stations were playing “El Paso.” Columbia relented and made it a single, and it went to #1 on both the pop and country charts.
    Only 35% of blind people were born blind.

CITY OF SUPERLATIVES
    The Big Apple isn’t the only big-city nickname. For instance, there’s…
    • Chicago, the City of Big Shoulders: You may know it as the “Windy City” (which refers to blustery politicians, not the weather), but it’s also called the “City of Big Shoulders,” taken from a line in Carl Sandburg’s 1916 poem “Chicago.”
    • Seattle, the Emerald City: This was the winning entry in a 1982 contest held by the Seattle-King County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
    • Charlotte, the Queen City: Settlers named the North Carolina city after the wife of King George III of England, Queen Charlotte.
    • Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love: A reflection of the state of Pennsylvania’s founding by the peaceful religious sect known as the Quakers, Philadelphia in Greek translates literally to “city of brotherly love.”
    • Rochester, New York, the Flour City: Flour milling was the biggest industry in the city in the late 19th century.
    • Milwaukee, the Cream City: It has nothing to do with the dairy industry for which the rest of the state is famous. Red lacustrine clay is found in nearby lakes, and when it’s fired, it turns from red to cream-colored. Since the late 1800s, these cream-colored bricks have been a popular building material in the Milwaukee area.
    • Houston, the Magnolia City: First coined in the 1870s. Parts of the city occupy what used to be large forests of magnolia trees.
    • New Orleans, the Big Easy: There are two versions of the origin, both from the early 1900s. Theory #1: Musicians called it “the Big Easy” because it was so easy to find work in one of the city’s many nightclubs. Theory #2: There were too few cops in New Orleans to enforce Prohibition, so there were a lot of illegal bars—so many that the city earned the nickname the “Big Speakeasy,” or the “Big Easy,” for short.
    • Miami, the Magic City: The term was coined by a reporter in the 1910s after the city’s population exploded, as if by magic, from 300 in 1896 to 12,000 by 1910.
    • Dallas, the Big D : The name was used as early as the 1930s but was popularized by the 1956 musical The Most Happy Fella . A character sings “Big D” about Dallas, which includes the lyric “Big D, little a , double l , a - s .”
    • Nashville, the Athens of the South: The city has been called that since the 1850s. Like the ancient Greek city, Nashville was a center of education, hosting four colleges. It was also the first Southern city with a public school system. (Nashville is also known as “Music City, USA,” because it’s the hub of the country music industry.)
    • San Francisco, Baghdad by the Bay: San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen invented the phrase in the 1940s in honor of the city’s multicultural population.
    • Indianapolis, the Circle City: Unlike most cities, which are arranged in a rectangular grid, Indianapolis was originally built as a series of concentric circles, with a circular commons at the center.
    • Portland, the City of Roses: The city’s wet climate makes it well suited for growing roses. The International Rose Test Garden is located there; there’s been an annual Rose Festival since 1905.
    • Boston, the Cradle of Liberty: Two major events that directly led to the American Revolution occurred in Boston: the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party.
    • Washington, D.C., the Chocolate City: It may not be