Many restaurants in France allow dogs and even offer special menus for them.
Denmark has the highest income tax in the world, as high as 52.6 percent.
Finland has more islands than any other country: 179,584.
Largest empire in all of human history: the British empire of the 19th century.
Venice, Italy, is built in a lagoon on top of 118 islands.
Biggest French-speaking city: Paris. Second: Montreal.
England is two-thirds the size of the New England states.
Netherlands is the only country with a national dog: the Keeshond.
Parks & Recreation
The federal government owns about 29 percent of the land in the United States.
If any of the heads on Mt. Rushmore had a body, it would be nearly 500 feet tall.
Big Bend National Park (Texas) is home to 350 species of birds—more than any other national park.
There are 898 steps in the Washington Monument.
More than half of all the geysers in the world are in Yellowstone National Park.
The U.S. Capitol has 365 steps—one for each day of the year—from the basement to the top of the dome.
Number of marine wildlife sanctuaries in the United States where fishing is illegal: zero.
Officially designated wilderness in the United States: 4.7 percent.
Walt Disney World generates about 56 tons of trash every day.
At last count, 1,013 buildings in the United States have a sign that reads “George Washington slept here.”
Disney World is twice the size of Manhattan.
Cost of a single-day ticket to Disneyland in 1955: $10. In 2005: $56.
REDUNDANCIES
old fossil
new beginning
fellow countrymen
appreciated in value
3 a.m. in the morning
old geezer
illegal scam
successful escape
strangled to death
awkward predicament
Super Bowl
Each year Americans consume 8 million pounds of guacamole on Super Bowl Sunday.
New York jewelers Tiffany & Co. are responsible for making the Super Bowl trophy.
Electronics companies sell five times as many big-screen TVs during Super Bowl week.
The Super Bowl is broadcast to over 182 countries in the world.
Roger Staubach holds the record for most career Super Bowl fumbles, with five.
The average Super Bowl get together includes 18 people.
Advertisers pay an average of just over $2 million per 30-second commercial during a Super Bowl game.
The Dallas Cowboys have played in a record eight Super Bowls and have won five of them.
The largest margin of victory in a Super Bowl is 45 points. In Super Bowl XXIV, the San Francisco 49ers defeated the Denver Broncos 55–10.
Joe Montana is the only player to be named Super Bowl MVP three times. He won all three awards while playing quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers.
Steve Cristie kicked the longest field goal in Super Bowl history, in 1994: 54 yards.
More than 86 million Americans watched the Super Bowl in 2005.
What’s in the Drain?
Believe it or not, Roto Rooter claims they’ve found the following items in clogged pipes:
HOME AND GARDEN: Broom handles, doorknobs, garden hoses, bungee cords, and a hummingbird feeder.
HEALTH AND BEAUTY AIDS: Glass eyes, gold teeth, dentures, contact lenses, toothbrushes, hearing aides, and toupees.
CLOTHING AND LINENS: Women’s lingerie, long johns, towels, robes, a complete bedspread, and, of course, a multitude of missing socks.
ELECTRONICS: TV remotes, pagers, an alarm clock, a Timex that took a licking and kept on ticking, and a Rolex that took a licking and died.
SPORTING GOODS AND TOYS: An eight ball, golf balls (30 in one drain), a shrimp net, a tear-gas projectile, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle doll.
PETS: Birds, bats, beavers, cats, ducks, fish, frogs, possums, skunks, a piranha, a two-and-a-half-pound trout, and lots of snakes—including a 6-foot rattlesnake.
VALUABLES: $400 in coins, $58 in change in a Laundromat pipe, canceled checks, a $4,000 diamond, and $50,000.
GROCERIES: A Cornish game hen and a six-pack of Budweiser.
Storms
In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world’s nuclear weapons combined.
More ships have been sunk by hurricanes than by warfare.
Dust storms in Arizona caused 119 car crashes in 2003.
The state with the most lightning and thunderstorms: Florida, the “Sunshine State.”
Ninety percent of all the tornadoes in the world occur in the United States.
At this moment, nearly 2,000 thunderstorms are taking place around the world.
About 65 percent of all hurricanes tracked since 1900 have occurred in August and September.
More thunderstorms—3,000 a day—hit the tropics than any other place on earth.
The Australians used to name hurricanes after unpopular politicians.
In Australia, hurricanes are called “tropical cyclones.” And dust storms in the Outback are called “Willy Willies.”
At any given moment, about half of the earth is covered by clouds.
Tornadoes move with wind speeds of 100 to 300 mph.
An estimated 25 million cloud to ground lightning bolts kill an annual average of 73 people in the U.S.
An average spot on earth receives 33.86 inches of rain and precipitation annually.
Scientists learn about the moisture in clouds by studying the dew on spiderwebs.
Odds that a thunderstorm will strike Daytona, Florida, in the next four days: 100 percent.
Bug Off!
Cockroaches stowed away on the Apollo XII flight.
A flea can jump 30,000 times without taking a break.
The first job of a newborn queen bee is to kill the other newborn queens so she can rule alone.
Queen bees only sting other queen bees.
There are 290,000 beetle species on earth, the most of any animal.
If a grasshopper is hungry enough, it will eat the paint off your house.
Most snails are born with their shells.
The average caterpillar has 2,000 muscles in its body. The average human, less than 700.
A female flea can drink 15 times her weight in blood a day.
Queen termites can lay 86,000 eggs a day.
Constipation kills more fruit flies than any other ailment.
REM
It wasn’t until 1954 that scientists recognized that REM (rapid eye movement) during sleep was caused by dreaming. Here’s more:
Once you’re in REM the muscles of your middle ear begin vibrating (scientists don’t know why). Pulse and breathing speed up. (But we breathe less oxygen and use fewer calories than in other stages of sleep.) Eyes dart all over the place, “seeing” what we’re dreaming.
We can dream without REM, but scientists have established that these dreams are simple and uneventful. REM dreaming, on the other hand, is the more exciting, dramatic kind. We do REM dreaming about two hours a night. In a lifetime, this adds up to five or six years of REM dreaming.
You may think that because your body seems to go off-line, your mind does, too. Not so. Your brain spends the night integrating the information and experiences you’ve gained during the day, and most of this happens during REM sleep. Laboratory tests showed that if mice learned complex tasks and then were deprived of their REM time, they forgot what they learned. In tests on University of Ottawa students, researchers noticed that the faster students learned things, the more REM time they required. Slower learners needed less REM time.
Life stresses and changes also increase the need for REM. Using a group of divorcing women in their early 30s as subjects, psychoanalyst Rosalind Cartwright conducted a study that demonstrated they needed more REM time to ass
imilate their big changes.
Most people don’t reach REM until about an hour and a half after going to sleep; people with depression, however, get to REM in about half that time. They also experience it more intensely.
REM occupies approximately 22 percent of sleeping time.
Call the Doctor
The longest case of constipation ever recorded lasted 102 days.
The longest recorded sneezing fit was 978 consecutive days.
According to Guinness, the longest recorded bout of hiccups lasted for 65 years.
People with brain disorders suffer from far fewer headaches than the general public.
As far as anyone can tell, only humans get headaches.
Big blisters are called vesicles; small ones are called bullae.
Ten body parts have three-letter names: eye, hip, arm, leg, ear, toe, jaw, rib, lip, gum.
Only 33 percent of patients admitted to emergency rooms for heart attacks have actually had one.
The first open-heart surgery was performed in 1893.
The most common disease in the world: tooth decay.
SUPERSTITIOUS?
Stuffing a cat’s tail up your nose will cure a nosebleed.
It’s bad luck to see three butterflies on one leaf at the same time.
Carrying a badger’s tooth brings good luck, especially at gambling.
To make a sleeping woman talk, put a frog’s tongue on her heart.
Pictures of an elephant bring good luck, but only if they face a door.
A Spider’s Web
Although it’s only about 0.00012 inch in diameter, a spider’s silk is stronger than steel of equal diameter. It is more elastic than nylon, more difficult to break than rubber, and is bacteria and fungi resistant. These qualities explain why at one time web was used to pack wounds—to help mend them and stop bleeding.
Spiders have up to six types of spinning glands, each producing a different type of silk. For instance, the cylindrical gland produces silk used for egg sacs (males often lack this) and the aciniform gland produces silk used for wrapping prey. Some spiders have glands that produce very fine silk. They comb and tease the fine strands until it’s like Velcro—tiny loops and hooks that entrap insect feet.
Silk is extruded through special pores called spinneretes which consist of different sized “spigots.” Silk starts out as a liquid. As the liquid silk contacts the air, it hardens. The spider may need different silk for different purposes. By changing how fast the liquid is extruded or by using a different silk gland, it can control the strength and quality of the silk.
Why doesn’t a spider get stuck on its own web? The spider weaves in nonsticky silk strands and only walks on those. Also, spiders have a special oil on their legs that keeps them from sticking.
The spider is a hunter and its web is a snare, designed to hold its prey. So the design of its web and the place where the spider builds it depend on the kind of insects it is trying to catch.
Male spiders of some species use vibrations to communicate to the female. They strum the female’s web and must send just the right vibration to convince the female that they are mates . . . and not dinner.
Education
The students at the first Montessori school were the underprivileged preschoolers of Rome’s slums.
Schoolhouses were traditionally painted red because it was the cheapest color available.
The first chalkboard was used in a school in 1714.
Dartmouth was the last Ivy League college to go coed. It held out until 1972.
In 2004, for the first time in its history, Harvard admitted more women than men to its freshman class.
Every year Harvard University denies admission to an estimated 80 percent of the high school valedictorians who apply.
Thirty-five percent of American students don’t like to go to school.
Sixty-one percent of American students find school boring.
Of all the students in the world, Americans spend more school time in physical education: 12 percent. France and New Zealand are next, with 11 percent.
The average American spends 15.2 years of his or her life at school. Norwegians spend the longest of any country: 16.9 years.
The most common school colors in the United States are white and blue.
A quarter of America’s college students hold full-time jobs.
Three out of four college students expect to become millionaires.
On average, college grads earn $1.4 million in their lifetime. Grad school grads: $3 million.
March of Science
In July 1981 Japanese factory worker Kenji Urada became “the first known fatality caused by a robot.”
Australia has a robot that shears sheep. Japan has one that makes sushi.
As of 2005 there were more cell phones in the United Kingdom than people.
There are more telephones than people in Washington, D.C.
The first e-mail was sent over the Internet in 1972.
Grace Hopper coined the term computer bug when a moth shorted out her computer.
The world’s highest public telephone booth is on the Siachen Glacier in India.
In 1997 about one third of American homes had computers. In 2005 it was two thirds.
A $100,000 computer 20 years ago computed about as much as a $10 chip can today.
Finland is the only nation in the world that has more cell phones than regular phones.
Worldwide an estimated 85 percent of all phone calls are conducted in the English language.
The distress signal before SOS: CQD—“Come quick danger.”
In Saudi Arabia there are solar-powered pay phones in the desert.
In 1995, personal computers outsold televisions in the United States, and the number of e-mail messages exceeded stamped letters.
On an average weekday, people in New York City make 36 million phone calls.
About half the world’s telephones are in the United States.
The Bard
More than 40 states have Shakespeare theater companies and/or annual festivals honoring the Bard.
Second most-published playwright in history, after Shakespeare: Neil Simon.
During his lifetime, Shakespeare’s last name was spelled 83 different ways.
William Shakespeare earned about $40 a year from his writing.
Shakespeare’s son’s name was Hamnet, just one letter away from Hamlet.
Shakespeare’s love sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day . . .” was written to a young man.
Hamlet has been made into more films than any other Shakespeare play: 49.
There are no known images of Shakespeare.
Not one of the characters in Shakespeare’s plays smokes.
Longest word used by Shakespeare: honorificabilitudinitatibus. It means “with honor.” James Joyce also used it in Ulysses.
London’s Globe Theatre burned to the ground in 1613 during a performance of King Henry VIII, the last play Shakespeare wrote.
William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes died on the same day in 1616.
At the Library
The total number of original books that have been published: 65 billion.
Number of books in print in 1948: 78,000. In 2005: more than 1.8 million.
The Library of Congress has 530 miles of bookshelves.
One out of every four books sold in the United States is a mystery or suspense novel.
The average American adult can read between 150 and 200 words a minute.
Americans bought $23.7 billion worth of books in 2004.
The average American household has 15 cookbooks.
In the last five years 70 percent of adult Americans have not been in a bookstore.
The average dictionary contains entries for 278,000 words.
First nationwide best-selling book in the United States: the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.
Top-selling comic book of all time: X-Men #1: 8.1 million copies.
One third of h
igh school graduates never read another book.
Twenty percent of all publications sold in Japan are comic books.
The CliffsNotes edition of The Scarlet Letter outsells Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book three to one.
Seventy percent of books published do not earn back their advance.
Women buy 55 percent of the fiction sold.
The first American cookbook, The Compleat Housewife, was published in 1746.
Men Are From Mars
Men gamblers bet more money when they bring their wives.
Men without hair on their chest are more likely to get cirrhosis of the liver than men with hair.
Forty-eight percent of men believe balding has a negative effect on business and social relationships.
Eighty-five percent of obscene phone calls are made by males.
Most common plastic surgery performed on American men: liposuction.
If a man’s tie is too tight, his vision gets worse.
If the average male never shaved, his beard would be 13 feet long the day he dies.
The average American man has $27 in his wallet right now.
Forty-three percent of single American men say they didn’t go on a date in 2001.
The average single man is one inch shorter than the average married man.
If you’re an average American male, you’ll spend 2,965 hours shaving in your lifetime.
Most married men sleep on the right side of the bed. Divorced men often switch to the left.
When you adjust for the weight difference, men are stronger than horses.
In 1898 all cheerleaders were male. Today 3 percent are.
Nineteen percent of men say they wouldn’t mind being stupid, “as long as they had a perfect body.”
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (Bathroom Readers) Page 20