Dr. Schmierkase and Dr. Butterbrod

     Uncle John's Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader by the Bathroom Reader's Institute is absolutely absorbing. Certain pages of it should be incorporated in Republican and Democratic platforms, and in religious sermons, as an improvement.
     There is a story in this bathroom reader about two scientists named Dr. Schmierkase and Dr. Butterbrod, who had discovered "what appeared to be the fossil of the whale that had swallowed Jonah." The story is attributed to the Toronto Mail and Empire, which published it in the early 1920's. The newspaper reported that the whale had a muscle that functioned like a trapdoor, giving access to its stomach.
     Uncle John's describes the effect on the public and the outcome of the story:
     The next day, evangelists all over Toronto read the story from the pulpit, citing it as confirmation that the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale was true...and the day after that, a rival newspaper ran a story reporting on the evangelists' speech.
     Three days after the original story ran, The Toronto Mail and Empire ran a second story exposing the first one as a hoax, the work of a journalist named Charles Langdon Clarke.
     Clarke liked to spend his free time cooking up news items based on Biblical stories, and then attributing them to fictional newspapers like the Babylon Gazette or The Jerusalem Times for added credibility. Anyone who spoke German would have had an inkling that the story was a joke -- Dr. Schmierkase and Dr. Butterbrod translates as Dr. Cheese and Dr. Butter Bread.