Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (Bathroom Readers)
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Jackie Robinson’s salary (1951): $39,750 per year
Fashion Sense
The ancient Romans dyed their hair with bird droppings.
About three quarters of American adults wear some kind of fragrance.
The average fashion model weighs 23 percent less than the average American woman.
When she died in 1603, Queen Elizabeth I owned 3,000 dresses. When Empress Elizabeth of Russia died in 1762, she owned 15,000 dresses.
Queen Elizabeth I owned 2,000 pairs of gloves.
Percentage of Americans who say a unibrow is a turnoff: 35.
Bozo the Clown wore size 83AAA shoes.
The average person owns 25 T-shirts.
Don’t believe the Scots. The kilt originated in France.
Blue neckties sell best. Red ties are second.
Julius Caesar wore a laurel wreath crown to hide the fact that he was balding.
In 1907 egret plumes were worth twice their weight in gold.
The first person to wear silk stockings: England’s Queen Elizabeth I. They were a gift.
In 1797 James Hetherington invented the top hat and wore it in public. He was arrested for disturbing the peace.
REDUNDANCIES
knots per hour
temporary reprieve
cluster together
disappear from view
total extinction
violent explosion
Fat & Fat Free
Average caloric requirement for existing (breathing, eating, sleeping): 1,000–1,500 per day.
Thirty-five percent of American dieters blame candy for their failure to lose weight. Twenty-one percent blame cheese.
Melting an ice cube in your mouth burns about 2.3 calories.
You’d have to walk five miles to burn off the calories of a hot fudge sundae.
You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV.
Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring half a gallon of water to a boil.
To lose one pound of fat, you need to walk at least 35 miles (briskly).
A karaoke singing of “We Are the World” burns 20.7 calories.
About 36 percent of people who make a New Year’s resolution to diet and exercise break it by January 31.
Play a round of golf, then drink two cocktails. You’ve just gained more calories than you burned.
REMEMBER 1981?
President Reagan and Pope John Paul II shot; both recovered
Charles and Diana married
Sandra Day O’Connor became first woman
appointed to Supreme Court
52 U.S. hostages released from Iran
AIDS identified for the first time
MTV debuted
Film Firsts & Mosts
First movie shown in the White House: Birth of a Nation, in 1916. Woodrow Wilson was president.
Nanook of the North (1922) was the first documentary film ever made.
The first movie stars to leave their hand- and footprints at Grauman’s: Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, April 30, 1927.
The Jazz Singer (1927) was only about 25 percent talkie, and ad-libbed at that.
The first movie to premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre: Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings (1927).
The first scripted “all-talking” feature-length picture was the gangster film Lights of New York (1928).
The first movie shown in a drive-in theater: Wife Beware, in 1933.
According to a 2005 Harris Poll, America’s favorite movie stars are, in order: Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford, Denzel Washington, and John Wayne (d. 1979).
Drew Barrymore was five years old when she made her first appearance in a feature film (Altered States, 1980).
First movie star to appear on a postage stamp: Gene Kelly.
Highest-grossing sports movie in history: Rocky IV, followed by Jerry Maguire.
The longest film ever released was Andy Warhol’s ****, aka The 24 Hour Movie. When it flopped, Warhol released a 90-minute version that didn’t do very well either.
Highest price ever paid for a movie prop: $275,000, for 007’s Aston Martin from Goldfinger.
Let It Snow!
The tiniest snowflake ever recorded: 1/500 of an inch in diameter. Largest snowflakes: 15 inches in diameter and eight inches thick. They fell in Montana in 1887.
In the United States, more snow falls in February than in any other month.
When groundhogs predict the start of spring, they’re wrong 72 percent of the time.
Coldest towns on earth: Verkyoyanks and Oymyakon, Siberia, with temperatures as low as –95°F.
Hawaii is the only state that has never recorded a temperature below 0°F.
Very thin, weak ice is known as “cat ice” because it can’t even support the weight of a cat.
On January 20, 1973, it was –16°F in Deadwood, South Dakota, but 52°F in Lead—only one and a half miles away.
When the ground temperature is below freezing, it can’t hail.
Largest 24-hour snowfall on record in the United States: Valdez, Alaska, in January 1990—47.5 inches.
Twenty-three percent of the world’s landmass is buried under snow at least part of the year.
About one third of the earth’s surface never gets snow.
The largest hailstone ever recorded was 17.5 inches in diameter—bigger than a basketball.
On average, Salt Lake City gets more snow than Fairbanks, Alaska.
Presidential Firsts
PRESIDENT: John Quincy Adams
NOTABLE FIRST: First president interviewed in the nude.
BACKGROUND: President Adams loved to skinny-dip. In hot weather he’d sneak out for a swim in the Potomac. One morning Anne Royall—a reporter who had been trying to interview him for months—sneaked up while he was swimming, sat on his clothes, and refused to leave until he granted her an interview. He did.
PRESIDENTS: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
NOTABLE FIRSTS: The only presidents to be arrested together.
BACKGROUND: One afternoon in the spring of 1791, future presidents Jefferson and Madison were riding in a carriage through the Virginia countryside when a rural sheriff pulled them over and arrested them on the spot. Their crime: riding in a carriage on Sunday.
PRESIDENT: Benjamin Harrison
NOTABLE FIRST: First president with a fear of electricity.
BACKGROUND: President Harrison knew two things about electricity: The White House had just been wired for it, and it could kill people (the electric chair was becoming a common form of execution). That was all he needed to know—he didn’t want anything more to do with it. Throughout his entire term, he and his wife refused to turn the lights on and off themselves. They either had the servants do it or left the lights off or on all night.
PRESIDENT: Theodore Roosevelt
NOTABLE FIRST: First and last (that we know of) president to wear another president’s body part during his inauguration.
BACKGROUND: The night before he was sworn into office in 1901, Roosevelt was given an unusual gift—a ring containing strands of hair that had been cut from President Abraham Lincoln’s head the night he was assassinated. Roosevelt wore the ring to his inauguration the next day.
PRESIDENT: William Howard Taft
NOTABLE FIRST: First president to throw out the first pitch of the baseball season.
BACKGROUND: Weighing in at over 330 pounds, Taft handlers feared his girth might make him seem weak when he ran for office again. So, in 1910, one of them suggested to the president that he begin playing a sport to prove that he still had his youthful vigor. When Taft vetoed the idea, his aide suggested that he at least make a ceremonial appearance at a sporting event—say, to throw out the first ball of the baseball season. Taft agreed, and on April 14, 1910, he waddled out to the pitcher’s mound at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., and pitched a ball to home plate. (It went wild.) Continuing the tradition started by Taft, subsequent pr
esidents’ pitches were just as wild. By 1929, rather than actually pitch the ball, most presidents just threw it onto the field from their seat in the stands.
PRESIDENT: Warren G. Harding
NOTABLE FIRST: First president to bet (and lose) White House china in poker games.
BACKGROUND: Harding was an enthusiastic poker player; unfortunately, he wasn’t very good at it and was often short of cash. End result: When he was low on cash during poker games with his buddies, he used individual pieces of fine White House china for poker chips. It is not known how many pieces of the china were lost in this way.
WORD PLAY
We have to polish the Polish furniture.
How can he lead if he can’t get the lead out?
A skilled farmer sure can produce a lot of produce.
The dump was so full it had to refuse refuse.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
No time like the present to present the present.
A small-mouthed bass was painted on the big bass drum.
The white dove dove down into Dover.
Once Upon a Time
In France it was once considered bad luck to cut your fingernails on Friday.
Ancient Romans paid their taxes with honey.
The Aztecs restricted the smelling of certain flowers to the upper classes.
Pogo sticks were first used by sacrificial dancers in Borneo.
The world has been at peace only 8 percent of the time over the last 3,500 years.
Germans once believed a pregnant woman could avoid premature delivery by carrying one of her husband’s socks.
Peanut butter sandwiches weren’t popular until the 1920s.
United States
At last count, Minnesota had 99 lakes named Mud Lake.
Oregon has the most ghost towns of any state.
There are no natural lakes in the state of Ohio. They are all man-made.
The Great Salt Lake in Utah is six times saltier than seawater.
Michigan borders no ocean but has more lighthouses than any other state.
Most crowded state: New Jersey, with an average of 1,000 people per square mile.
If you’re anywhere in the state of Florida, you’re within 60 miles of a beach.
According to one study, 24 percent of Iowans have some sort of lawn ornament in their yard.
Tennessee got its name in 1796. Before then it was known as Franklin.
Prohibition didn’t end in Mississippi until 1966.
The state capital of Texas has been moved 15 times.
George Washington nicknamed New York the Empire State.
Alaska has the highest percentage of baby boomers. Utah has the lowest.
Arizona has official state neckwear: the bolo tie.
The only state with no straight-line boundary is Hawaii.
More roses are grown in Texas than in any country on earth.
Until 1867 Alaska was known as Russian America.
Maine is the only state with a one-syllable name.
Slogan stamped onto New Hampshire license plates by state prison inmates: “Live free or die.”
Lost in Translation
Amen is the same in more languages than any other word. Taxi is second.
A group of non-English speakers chose “diarrhea” as one of the prettiest-sounding English words.
The language of Taki, spoken in parts of Guinea, consists of only 340 words.
Say it three times fast: Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung is German for “speed limit.”
How many languages in the world? About 5,000.
The French typing equivalent of “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” is “Take this old whiskey to the blonde judge who’s smoking a cigar.”
In England a cat is sometimes called a moggy. Noses are conks.
Number of languages spoken in India: about 845.
The German language has about 185,000 words. French has fewer than 100,000.
The English language has the most words with nearly 1 million.
Native Americans spoke more than 133 different languages.
Nine most-used words in the English language: and, be, it, of, the, will, I, have, you.
The French word for walkie-talkie is talkie-walkie.
There are more than 500 words for macaroni in Italian.
More than 700 different languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea.
Most popular “American” expression on earth: OK.
The World Eats
On any given day, half the people in the world will eat rice.
Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
The French eat an average of 200 million frogs each year.
Peruvians eat about 65 million guinea pigs each year.
In Japan you can buy cocoa flavored with 2 percent chili-pepper sauce.
You can buy horseradish ice cream in Tokyo.
In Denmark, Danish pastries are called Vienna bread.
Best-selling candy bar in Russia: Snickers.
The average Briton drinks four cups of tea per day.
Damper is an unleavened bread made by Australian in the bush.
Germans eat more potatoes per capita than any other people, averaging 370 pounds per year.
The most popular Campbell’s soup in Hong Kong is water-cress and duck gizzard.
Domino’s Pizza sells a reindeer sausage pizza, but only in Iceland.
Tibetans drink a tea made of salted rancid yak butter.
REDUNDANCIES
baby calf
circle around
slippery slime
hollow tube
illegal poaching
old adage
NFL football team
merge together
sandwiched between
reflect back
The Wild West
Billy the Kid’s first crime? Stealing clothes from a Chinese laundry.
In the Old West, more cowboys died crossing swollen rivers than during gunfights.
Billy the Kid was buried in a shirt five sizes too big.
Buckeroo is the anglicized form of vaquero, the Spanish word for cowboy.
Two black aces and eights are called the “dead man’s hand.” It’s what Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot dead in the Number Ten Saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory.
Wild Bill Hickok had a brother. His nickname was Tame Bill.
Jesse James issued his own press releases.
Legendary Johnny Ringo didn’t die with his boots on—his killer made him take them off before shooting him.
1860 ad for Pony Express riders: Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.
There were no ponies in the Pony Express.
The gunfight at the O.K. Corral lasted 30 seconds and left three bad guys dead and three good guys wounded.
John Henry “Doc” Holliday was a doctor of dentistry.
The notorious Black Bart (Charles E. Bolton) robbed 27 Wells Fargo stagecoaches in his day; on his release from San Quentin prison, he disappeared and was never heard from again.
Jesse James’s father was a Baptist minister.
Cowboys called jail the hoosegow after the Spanish word juzgado, meaning “court of justice.”
Food for Thought
You can think 625 thoughts on the caloric energy of one Cheerio.
Eat one lump of sugar and you’ve eaten the equivalent of three feet of sugar cane.
According to food researchers, thyme helps prevent tooth decay.
The calories in a bagel with cream cheese can run an electric toothbrush for 52 hours, 20 minutes.
The darker green a vegetable is, the more vitamin C it contains.
A bowl of Wheaties contains twice as much sodium as a bowl of potato chips.
One big difference between canned and fresh vegetables is salt. There’s up to 40 times more in cans.
The
USDA recommends five servings of fruits and veggies a day. The average adult eats 4.4. Kids eat 3.4.
The only food that provides calories with no nutrition is sugar.
The peanut is one of the most concentrated sources of nourishment.
The most popular fruit in the United States: apples, followed by oranges and bananas.
Broccoli was first introduced to the United States in the 1920s. Today 27 percent of Americans say broccoli is their favorite vegetable.
Pound for pound, oysters have 20 times as much cholesterol as eggs.
Spinach consumption in the United States rose 33 percent after the Popeye comic strip became a hit in 1931.
You burn 26 calories with a one-minute kiss.
The Metric System
HISTORY. In the years following the French Revolution of 1789, the French Republic tried to make a clean break from the past by inventing a new form of government, new names for the seasons, a new calendar with new names for all of the days and months, and other such innovations. Over the next 30 years most of these reforms fell by the wayside, but one of them didn't—the metric system.
THE METER. Originally intended to be exactly one 10-millionth the length of the distance between the North Pole and the equator. The only problem: Measuring instruments weren’t precise enough to measure such a vast distance accurately, so the length that was chosen for the meter turned out to be the wrong one. By the time scientists discovered this, however, the meter’s length—39.37 inches—was so widely accepted that they decided not to change it.
LITERS, KILOGRAMS, GRAMS. Once the scientists designing the metric system settled on the length of the meter, they used it to create measurements for mass and volume. They designed a cube with each side exactly one-tenth of a meter (a decimeter) long and filled it with water. The space that the water filled was designated as a liter, and the amount the water weighed was called a kilogram, which was then subdivided into 1,000 units called grams.