Neanderthals are believed to have buried their dead.
The Japanese express grief and mourning after the death of a loved one by wearing white, not black.
It is legal for a dead person to vote if he or she died after mailing in an absentee ballot.
When a person is dying, hearing is the last sense to go. Sight is the first.
The most common word spoken by a dying person is “Mother” or “Mommy.”
According to a German doctor who weighed patients at the moment of death, the human soul weighs three-fourths of an ounce.
In 2003, 29 percent of Americans were cremated after they died.
In the Congo professional corpse painters charge admission to see their work.
Tombstones were originally put over graves so the dead couldn’t escape.
Gail Borden (inventor of condensed milk) is buried beneath a headstone shaped like a milk can.
WORD PLAY
The wind was way too strong to wind the sail.
After a number of injections, my jaw finally got number.
You sow! You’ll reap what you sow!
Time & Space
Every four seconds, somebody in the world opens a can of Spam.
Put 23 people in a room and there’s a 50 percent chance two will share a birthday.
Thursday is the least busy day for barbershops.
Friday the 13th comes at least once every year, but never more than three times a year.
There are 20 days in the Aztec week.
About 90 percent of time capsules are never recovered.
Every thousand years, spring gets two-thirds of a day shorter.
A moment lasts 90 seconds.
If you’re too young to be a baby boomer and too old to be a Generation Xer, you’re a Cusper.
It would take two and a half minutes to fall from the top of Mt. Everest.
It’s estimated that you’ll spend a year of your life looking for misplaced objects.
If it happened before A.D. 476, it’s ancient. After A.D. 476, it’s medieval.
The Incas measured time by how long it took a potato to cook.
REMEMBER 1983?
U.S. invaded Grenada
Reagan proposed the Star Wars program
Truck bomb in Lebanon killed 241 U.S. Marines
Thriller became bestselling album of all time
M*A*S*H ended after 251 episodes
Terms of Endearment won 5 Oscars
Myth America
SAVAGES
Myth: Scalping was a brutal tactic invented by the Indians to terrorize the settlers.
Truth: Scalping was actually an old European tradition dating back hundreds of years. Dutch and English colonists were paid a “scalp bounty” by their leaders as a means of keeping the Indians scared and out of the way. Finally the Indians caught on and adopted the practice themselves. The settlers apparently forgot its origins and another falsehood about Native American cruelty was born.
THANKSGIVING
Myth: The Pilgrims ate a Thanksgiving feast of turkey and pumpkin pie after their first year in the New World, and we’ve been doing it ever since.
Truth: Thanksgiving didn’t become a national holiday until Abraham Lincoln declared it in 1863, and the Pilgrims ate neither the bird we call turkey, nor pumpkin pie.
MANHATTAN ISLAND
Myth: In 1626 Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from the Canarsee tribe for $24 worth of beads and other trinkets.
Truth: Minuit did give 60 guilders (roughly $24) worth of beads, knives, axes, clothes, and rum to Chief Seyseys of the Canarsee tribe “to let us live amongst them” on Manhattan Island. But the Canarsee actually got the best of the deal because they didn’t own the island in the first place. They lived on the other side of the East River in Brooklyn, and only visited the southern tip of Manhattan to fish and hunt. The Weckquaesgeeks tribe, which lived on the upper three fourths of the island, had a much stronger claim to it and were furious when they learned they’d been left out of the deal. They fought with the Dutch settlers for years until the Dutch finally paid them, too.
BUNKER HILL
Myth: The Battle of Bunker Hill, where the Americans first faced the redcoats, was the colonists’ initial triumph in the Revolutionary War.
Truth: Not only did the British wallop the Americans in the encounter, the whole thing wasn’t even fought on Bunker Hill. The American troops had actually been ordered to defend Bunker Hill, but there was an enormous foul-up and somehow they wound up trying to protect nearby Breed’s Hill, which was more vulnerable to attack. They paid for it. When the fighting was over, the Americans had been chased away by the British troops. Casualties were heavy for both sides: about 450 Americans were killed, and a staggering 1,000 (out of 2,100) redcoats died.
THE PILGRIMS
Myth: The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
Truth: This tale originated in 1741, more than 100 years after the Pilgrims arrived. It has been attributed to a then-95-year-old man named Thomas Fraunce, who claimed his father had told him the story when he was a boy. However, his father didn’t land with the Pilgrims—he reached America three years after they did. The Pilgrims first landed in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
YANKEE DOODLE
Myth: “Yankee Doodle” was originally a patriotic song.
Truth: It was composed in England as an anti-American tune. The phrase “stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni” referred to a foppish English group called the Macaroni Club, whose members wore ludicrous “continental” fashions they mistakenly believed to be elegant. The British laughed at “Yankee Doodle dandies,” bumpkins who didn’t know how silly they really were.
SO HIGH, SOLO
Myth: Charles Lindbergh was the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean.
Truth: He was the 67th person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic. The first nonstop flight was made by William Alcock and Arthur Brown in 1919, eight years before Lindbergh’s flight. Lindbergh was famous because he did it alone.
The Auto Industry
The automobile was invented in 1886. The used car lot (of 17 cars) was “invented” in 1897.
In 1924 a new Ford cost $265.
The first Rolls-Royce sold for $600, in 1906. Today they sell for more than $200,000.
Whale oil was used in automobile transmission fluids as late as 1973.
The average car has 15,000 parts.
No matter how cold it gets, gasoline won’t freeze. When the temperature gets below –180°F, it just turns gummy.
Toughest car ever: a 1957 Mercedes-Benz 180D racked up 1,184,880 miles in 21 years.
When used to make ethyl alcohol, an acre of potatoes will produce enough fuel to fill 25 cars.
It takes six months to build a Rolls-Royce and 13 hours to build a Toyota.
Goodyear once made a tire entirely out of corn.
The average 1995 luxury car had more than one mile of wiring.
The tubeless auto tire was invented by a man named Frank Herzegh. He made one dollar for it.
The first reported car theft in America took place in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1905.
It takes about two and a half gallons of oil to make a car tire.
The right rear tire on your car will wear out before the other three will.
No butts about it: Nissan has invented an artificial butt to test car seats.
More Americans have died in automobile accidents than have died in all U.S. wars.
Magazine Stand
The first American magazine (1741) was called The American Magazine.
Time magazine’s Man of the Year for 1988: “Endangered Earth.”
Who has appeared on the most covers of People magazine? Princess Diana—54 times.
Sixty-eight percent of gossip columnists say the best place to interview a celebrity is in their kitchen. Thirteen percent say their bedroom. Four percent say the yard.
Queen Elizabeth II was Time magazine’s “Man of the Year�
� for 1952.
A typical Playboy centerfold weighs 15 percent less than a typical woman of the same age and height.
Mia Farrow appeared on the first cover of People magazine.
Fifty percent of all magazines printed in the United States are never sold.
First subject ever photographed by National Geographic: the city of Lhasa, Tibet, in 1905.
Time magazine’s Person of the Century was Albert Einstein.
Mad was a comic book before it was converted into a magazine in 1956.
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner owns the crypt next to Marilyn Monroe at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. Monroe was his first centerfold.
First person to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine: John Lennon.
The Plant World
A variety of mimosa is called the sensitive plant because it wilts when touched.
The flowers of Africa’s baobab tree open only in the moonlight. They are pollinated by bats.
A species of fern has the most chromosomes of all living things: 630 pairs.
The Venus flytrap only grows wild in one place: a 100-mile stretch of Carolina swampland.
Oldest vegetable known to humans: the pea.
Artichokes are flowers.
Peaches used to be known as Persian apples.
Peanuts are one of the ingredients used to make dynamite.
The stuff that gives freshly mowed grass its smell: hexanol.
An average apple contains about six teaspoons of sugar.
Mushrooms share a common ancestry with insects, not plants.
Chair Leaders?
In search of a “World’s Largest” title, Bassett Furniture built a 20-foot 3-inch Mission chair. They sent it on tour to Bassett stores across the United States, calling it the World’s Largest Chair, until Anniston, Alabama, publicly refuted their claim. Now they call it the World’s Largest Chair on Tour.
A furniture company in Wingdale, New York, used more than a ton and a half of wood to build its 25-foot-tall Fireside Chair.
A custom furniture maker in Lipan, Texas, erected a 26-foot rocking chair in 2001.
Anniston, Alabama, has a 33-foot office chair in the vacant lot next to Miller Office Supply. A spiral staircase leads to the seat of the chair, which was constructed from 10 tons of steel.
The winner in the battle of the giant chairs is Promosedia in the province of Udine, Italy. Equivalent in size to a 7-story building, this chair was constructed in 1995 to advertise the chair-building region, known as the Chair Triangle. The 65-foot chair is indisputably the largest in the world. (So far.)
BATHROOM MISCELLANY
In medieval Europe, wedding ceremonies often took place in baths. Participants stood in a large tub as food was passed around on small boats.
Some 19th-century chamber pots were decorated with portraits of popular enemies on the inside. One popular target: Napoléon.
Women Are From Venus
Forty-six percent of women “wish they could do something about their thighs.”
Two out of three times, it’s the woman who starts a flirtation.
Fifteen percent of American women say they send flowers to themselves on Valentine’s Day.
Fifty-seven percent of women would rather go on a shopping spree than have sex.
About 10 percent of American women keep their last name when they marry.
Life expectancy for women in the United States: 80.1 years. In 1900 it was 48.7 years.
The average female mannequin is 8 feet tall. The average woman is 5 feet 4 inches tall.
The average American female will have 3.3 pregnancies in her lifetime.
A woman can detect the odor of musk, which is associated with male bodies, better than any other smell.
Eighty percent of migraine sufferers are women.
In 1950 only 7 percent of American women dyed their hair. Today 75 percent do.
As of 2003, more than 11 million American women earned more than their husbands.
In 1960, 3 percent of American lawyers were women. In 2005 the number was up to 30 percent.
Seventy-five percent of divorced women will remarry.
America Eats
America’s four favorite leftovers: pasta (including lasagna), pizza, chicken, and meatloaf.
America’s least favorite veggie: brussels sprouts.
More than 50 percent of Americans say they take 15 minutes or less for lunch every day.
Top three most hated foods in the United States: tofu, liver, and yogurt.
About a third of all ethnic restaurants in the United States are Chinese.
About 1 million people drink cola for breakfast.
If you feed a rhesus monkey a “typical American diet” it will die within two years.
The average American eats 82 pounds of chicken a year.
A New Yorker could eat out every night of his or her life and never eat at the same restaurant twice.
Potato chips are the biggest-selling snack food in the United States and Canada. In fact, of 100 people eating snack food, 70 of them are eating potato chips.
Americans eat 12 billion bananas a year.
A typical supermarket displays more than 25,000 items.
Only 55 percent of dinners served in the United States include even one homemade dish.
Creature Features
Ninety-five percent of the creatures on earth are smaller than a chicken egg.
Animal in your house closest to the average-size animal in the entire animal kingdom: the housefly.
Only about 3 percent of mammals practice monogamy.
Mammals have been on the earth 200 million years. Homo sapiens: 150,000 years.
If it’s a mammal, it has a tongue (or at least had one at one point).
If it has hair, feathers, or skin, it also has dandruff (dander).
Ninety percent of the wildlife species on the island of Madagascar are found nowhere else.
The E. coli bacteria has the fewest chromosomes: one pair.
Six of the most-hated creatures in the United States: cockroaches, mosquitoes, rats, wasps, rattlesnakes, and bats.
Seven thousand new insect species are discovered every year.
Last animal in the dictionary: the zyzzyva, a tropical American weevil.
WAR HEROES
What made the Dickin Medal for Valor unique during and after World War II? It was awarded to animals. From 1945 to 1949, 32 carrier pigeons, 18 dogs, three horses, and one cat were recipients of the medal.
Animal Myths
MYTH: Bats are blind.
FACT: Bats aren’t blind. But they have evolved as nocturnal hunters, and can see better in half-light than in daylight.
MYTH: Monkeys remove fleas in each other’s fur during grooming.
FACT: Monkeys don’t have fleas. They’re removing dead skin—which they eat.
MYTH: Male sea horses can become pregnant and give birth.
FACT: Actually, the female sea horse expels eggs into the male’s brood pouch, where they are fertilized. And while the male does carry the gestating embryos until they are born 10 days later, he doesn’t feed them through a placenta or similar organ (as had previously been thought). Instead, the embryos feed off nourishment in the egg itself—food provided by the female. Basically, the male acts as an incubator.
MYTH: Porcupines can shoot their quills when provoked.
FACT: A frightened porcupine tends to run from danger. If a hunter catches it, though, a porcupine will tighten its skin to make the quills stand up . . . ready to lodge in anything that touches them.
MYTH: Whales spout water.
FACT: Whales actually exhale air through their blowholes. This creates a mist or fog that looks like a waterspout.
MYTH: Moths eat clothes.
FACT: Moths lay their eggs, which eventually develop into larva, on your clothes. It’s the larvae that eat tiny parts of your clothes; adult moths do not eat cloth.
MYTH: Bumblebee flight violates the laws of
aerodynamics.
FACT: Nothing that flies violates the laws of aerodynamics.
Murphy’s Law
In 1949 the U.S. Air Force decided to conduct a series of tests on the effect of rapid deceleration on pilots so they could get a better understanding of how much force people’s bodies can tolerate in a plane crash. Volunteers were to wear a special harness fitted with 16 sensors that measured the acceleration, or g-forces, on different parts of their body. The harness was the invention of an air force captain named Edward A. Murphy—but it was assembled by someone else. The tests went off as expected, but no one will ever know the results because all 16 of the sensors failed. Each one gave a zero reading.
When Murphy examined the harness, he discovered that the sensors had been wired backward. There are varying accounts of what he said next, but at a press conference a few days later, he was quoted as having said, “If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way.”
Within months the expression became known throughout the aerospace industry as Murphy’s Law and from there it spread to the rest of the world. But as it spread it also evolved into the popular, more pessimistic form, “If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.”
THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT
Since 1949 any number of permutations of Murphy’s Law have arisen, dealing with subjects as diverse as missing socks and buttered bread falling to the floor. Some of these laws are grounded in very solid science:
MURPHY’S LAW OF BUTTERED BREAD: A dropped piece of bread will always land butter side down.
Scientific analysis: The behavior of a piece of bread dropped from table height is fairly predictable: As it falls to the ground it is more likely than not to rotate on its axis, and the distance to the ground is not sufficient for the bread to rotate the full 360 degrees needed for it to land face up. So more often than not, it will land face down.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (Bathroom Readers) Page 18