Triskaidekaphobia
Fear of the number 13 originated in Norse mythology. Aegir summoned 12 gods to a banquet in Valhalla. Guest number 13 showed up uninvited: Loki, god of evil.
Another possible connection comes from Christianity. Jesus and the 12 apostles dined together at the Last Supper, Judas, Christ’s betrayer, being the 13th.
Predating the Christians, the Turks hated the number 13 so much that it was almost expunged from their vocabulary.
The Romans associated the number 13 with death and misfortune. There were 12 months in a year and 12 hours in a day (according to the Roman clock), so 13 was seen as a violation of the natural cycle.
For ancient Egyptians, 13 represented the final rung of the ladder by which the soul reached eternity.
Even before that, at religious feasts in ancient Babylon, 13 people were selected to represent the gods. At the end of the ceremony, the 13th “god” was put to death.
Thirteen is the number of members in a witch’s coven.
According to The Encyclopedia of Superstitions, if 13 people gather in a room, one will die within a year. In 1798, Gentleman’s Magazine explained the superstition by saying: “It seems to be founded on calculations adhered to by insurance offices.”
The 13th card in the tarot deck is the skeleton—Death.
On the other hand, consider the ill-fated Apollo 13 lunar mission, which left the launchpad at 13:13 hours on April 13 . . . and then exploded, almost killing the entire crew.
Ice Cream Treats
ICE CREAM SODAS
In 1874 soda-fountain operator Robert M. Green sold a drink he made out of sweet cream, syrup, and carbonated soda water. One day he ran out of cream . . . so he used vanilla ice cream instead.
ESKIMO PIES
Christian Nelson owned a candy and ice cream store in Onawa, Iowa. One day in 1920 a kid came into the store and ordered a candy bar . . . and then changed his mind and asked for an ice-cream sandwich . . . and then changed his mind again and asked for a marshmallow nut bar. Nelson wondered why there wasn’t any one candy-and-ice-cream bar to satisfy all of the kid’s cravings—and then decided to make one himself: a vanilla bar coated with a chocolate shell. Once he figured out how to make the chocolate stick to the ice cream, he had to think of a name for his product. At a dinner party someone suggested Eskimo, because it sounded cold. But other people thought it sounded too exotic—so Nelson added the word pie.
SUNDAES
In the 1890s many religious leaders objected to people drinking ice cream sodas on Sunday. It was too frivolous. When “blue laws” were passed prohibiting the sale of the sodas, ice-cream parlor owners created the “Sunday,” which was only sold on the Sabbath; it contained all of the ingredients of a soda except the soda water. A few years later the dish was being sold all week, so the name was changed to sundae.
BASKIN-ROBBINS 31 FLAVORS
After World War II, Irvine Robbins and Burton Baskin built a chain of ice cream stores in Southern California. One day in 1953, Robbins says, “we told our advertising agency about our great variety of flavors and we said, almost in jest, that we had a flavor for every day of the month—thirty-one. They hit the table and said that was it, the thirty-one. So we changed the name of the company to Baskin Robbins 31. Like Heinz 57.”
Shark Attack!
Sharks can detect the heartbeats of other fish.
Mako sharks have been known to jump into the fishing boats that are pursuing them.
Approximately 10 times more men than women are attacked by sharks.
While in a feeding frenzy, some sharks bite their own bodies as they twist and turn.
A 730-pound mako shark caught off Bimini in the Bahamas contained in its stomach a 120-pound swordfish, with the sword still intact.
Sharks have a sixth sense. They can navigate by sensing changes in the earth’s magnetic field.
Greenland sharks have been observed eating reindeer that have fallen through ice.
Three men who spent five days adrift in the Atlantic in 1980 had a shark to thank for their rescue. They fell asleep, but when the attacking shark nudged their raft, they woke up in time to flag down a passing freighter.
Some sharks can detect one part of blood in 100 million parts of water.
Bull sharks have been known to pursue their victims onto land.
The jaws of an eight-foot shark exert a force of 20 tons per square inch.
The average shark can swallow anything half its size in one gulp.
The original idea for steak knives derived from shark teeth.
Sharks will continue to attack even when disemboweled.
It’s Slinky
When the Slinky first hit the shelves of Macy’s department store in New York City in 1949, the toy was so popular they had to be removed from the store’s shelves because the crowds of people were creating a fire hazard.
Slinkys have been used as makeshift radio antennae for soldiers during the Vietnam War, and as therapeutic tools for stroke victims.
All of the following Slinky toys have really been made: gold-plated Slinkys, felt-covered Slinky Pets with animal faces and tails, even a Slinky board game called the Amazing Slinky Game.
In 1999 Slinky appeared on a U.S. postage stamp.
It takes 80 feet of wire to make a Slinky.
Richard James, inventor of the Slinky, did not name the new toy. His wife, Betty, found the word in the dictionary—it took her two days of searching before she found the right word to describe the toy.
Slinky was taken aboard a NASA space shuttle to test the power of a Slinky in zero gravity.
PRECIOUS DETAILS
The ridges on the edges of coins are called “reeds.” They were added to metal currency to deter counterfeiting and to prevent people from shaving the precious metals off the rims. Despite the fact that coins are no longer made of pure metals, the reeds remain.
Dime: 118 reeds
Quarter: 119 reeds
Half dollar: 150 reeds
Susan B. Anthony dollar: 133 reeds
Tax Dollars at Work
In 1789 the total U.S. federal government debt was $190,000.
The IRS estimates that $20 to $40 billion are lost to tax fraud every year.
In 1952 Albert Einstein called income taxes “the most difficult thing to understand.”
There are 284 bathrooms in the Pentagon.
There are 412 doors in the White House.
Sixty-five percent of all paper bought by the federal government is used by the Defense Department.
Taxpayers spent $57,000 on gold-embossed playing cards for Air Force One in 1992.
When astronauts returned from the moon, they had to file a customs report declaring the moon rocks they brought back.
According to one government study, pigs can become alcoholics.
The U.S. government spent $277,000 on “pickle research” in 1993.
The United States spends $40 billion a year collecting “intelligence” from around the world.
The White House was known as the White House even before it was painted white.
The Pentagon spends $8,612 every second.
The Pentagon spent $50 million on Viagra for American troops and retirees in 1999.
George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cut added 14,368 pages to the U.S. Tax Code.
NASA spent $200,000 on a “sanitary napkin disposal unit” for female astronauts in 1992.
Sleep
The higher your IQ, the more you dream.
If you’re an average sleeper, you’ll roll over 12 times in bed tonight.
In 1900 the average American slept 9 hours, 20 minutes. Now it’s 7 hours, 20 minutes.
One in 10 children sleepwalks.
It takes the average person seven minutes to fall asleep each night.
According to doctors, babies dream in the womb.
Do you have insomnia? Some experts suggest wearing mittens and socks to bed.
There are more than 300 patents on antisnori
ng devices.
If you drop off to sleep as soon as you go to bed, it’s a sign that you’re sleep deprived.
Quitting smoking can reduce the amount of sleep you need each night by as much as an hour.
More than 50 percent of Americans fall asleep on their sides.
Only about 5 percent of people dream in color.
It’s impossible to snore in the weightlessness of space.
The average adult has four dreams a night and one nightmare a year.
If you go without sleep for 10 days straight, you could die.
Mr. President
John Quincy Adams and Dwight D. Eisenhower have been the only bald presidents, thus far.
Thomas Jefferson invented a coding device called the “wheel cipher.” It’s still used by the U.S. Navy.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826.
Herbert Hoover never accepted his presidential salary. He turned it over to charity instead.
Woodrow Wilson was the last president to type all of his own letters.
Calvin Coolidge was born on the Fourth of July.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president four times but never carried his home county—Duchess County, New York.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s favorite food: fried cornmeal mush. Eisenhower’s: prune whip.
Dwight Eisenhower helped popularize Izod alligator shirts.
John F. Kennedy and his staff played touch football on the White House lawn.
Lyndon Johnson used to give electric toothbrushes with presidential seals as gifts.
Texas-born Lyndon Johnson inspired a boom in cowboy hats.
Hearing aid sales rose 40 percent when Ronald Reagan got his.
George H. W. Bush was the youngest navy pilot of World War II. He enlisted on his 18th birthday, June 12, 1942.
Bill Clinton once called a proposed new tax a “wage-based premium.”
Geology 101
If a volcano has erupted within the last 10,000 years, it’s considered active.
Shifts in the earth’s crust have moved the pyramids of Egypt three miles south in 4,500 years.
Only 6 percent of land on earth is suitable for growing crops.
If scientists didn’t know a fault was there until an earthquake hit, it’s called a “blind” fault.
The earth is 100 million years older than the moon.
The Rock of Gibraltar is mostly gray limestone.
The earth weighs an estimated 100,000 tons more than it did a year ago.
The continent of Australia is drifting northward at a rate of 2.25 inches per year.
Iceland has so much geothermal power that it plans to end fossil fuel use by 2030.
Fingers & Toes
The pores in your feet release about a quarter cup of sweat a day.
There are 250,000 sweat glands in a pair of human feet, more than any other part of the body.
Injured fingernails grow faster than uninjured ones.
If you never trimmed your fingernails, on your 80th birthday they’d be about 13 feet long.
Fingers don’t have muscles.
Your fingernails are made from the same substance as a bird’s beak.
Humans are the only primates that don’t have pigment in the palms of their hands.
Fingernails grow 1/25 of an inch per week.
If you’re like most people, your fingernails grow four times as fast as your toenails.
Ingrown toenails are hereditary.
There’s an estimated 1 trillion bacteria on each of your feet.
Hand surgeons say that if you had to lose a finger, the index finger is the best one to lose.
In hand-to-hand combat, left-handed people are more likely to survive.
Horizontal ridges on your fingernails are indicators of high stress.
McDonald’s
When the first McDonald’s opened in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955, the hamburgers cost 15¢ each. The first day’s take was $366.12.
If you’d spent $2,250 on 100 shares of McDonald’s stock when it went public in 1965, your shares would have been worth over $1.8 million as of December 31, 2003.
If you want to manage a McDonald’s, you’ll train at a Hamburger University either in Oak Brook, Illinois, or in one of the 10 international Hamburger U.’s.
On an average day, McDonald’s feeds 43 million people.
McDonald’s sells “McSpaghetti” in the Philippines and “McLak” salmon burgers in Norway.
The average American will eat at McDonald’s 1,811 times in his or her life.
Only 4 percent of Americans can say they didn’t eat at McDonald’s last year.
McDonald’s makes 40 percent of its profits from Happy Meals.
McDonald’s is the largest single purchaser of American beef, buying nearly 1 billion pounds per year.
There are an average of 178 sesame seeds on a McDonald’s Big Mac bun.
World’s highest fast-food restaurant: McDonald’s in La Paz, Bolivia, at 11,000 feet above sea level.
December 10, 2005: McDonald’s opened its first drive-thru in China.
The Plant World
Poison oak is not an oak and poison ivy is not an ivy. Both are members of the cashew family.
The thickest tree on earth: El Tule, a cypress in Mexico. It has a girth of 138 feet.
The squirting cucumber can shoot its seeds up to 40 feet.
Half of the genes in a banana are the same as in a human.
Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries do.
The sap from the Venezuelan cow tree looks, feels, and tastes like cow’s milk.
If you plant bamboo today, it may not sprout flowers and produce seeds for 100 years.
A tree planted near a streetlight will keep its leaves longer into the fall than other trees.
The trunk of the African baobab tree can grow as large as 100 feet in circumference.
A single mushroom can produce as many as 40 million spores in an hour.
A 4,770-year-old bristlecone pine named Methuselah is the oldest living thing on earth.
In the densest jungle, only 1 percent of sunlight ever reaches the forest floor.
The Eyes Have It
If you’re an average blinker, your eyes will be blinked closed for about 30 minutes today.
As you read this sentence, your eyes are moving back and forth 100 times per second.
Your eyes don’t freeze in the cold because of the salt in your tears.
One in 500 people have one blue eye and one brown eye.
A human eyeball weighs about an ounce.
A black eye is called a “periorbital ecchymosis.”
Blue eyes have less pigment in them than brown eyes.
In 2005, about 177 million out of the estimated 287 million U.S. population are expected to need vision correction.
About a third of the human race has 20/20 vision.
Forty-five million baby boomers age 35 to 49 wear spectacles or contact lenses.
Almost half of Americans would consider wearing glasses as a fashion accessory, even if they didn’t need them.
If you go blind in one eye, you’ll only lose about one fifth of your vision.
Why does your nose run when you cry? It’s excess fluid from your eyes.
Two out of three adults in the United States will need glasses at some point in their lives.
In 1979 a South African boy was found to have a marigold seed growing from his left eye.
When you’re looking at someone you love, your pupils dilate. When you’re looking at someone you hate, they do the same thing.
Coffee, Anyone?
People who drink coffee are less likely to commit suicide than people who don’t.
The average American drinks 3.4 cups of coffee a day.
Thirty-seven percent of U.S. coffee drinkers use milk and sugar. Twenty-one percent drink it black.
There are 1,000 different chemicals in a cup of coffee—26 of them have been tested to see if t
hey cause cancer in laboratory rats, and 13 of them do.
In the 1820s a temperance movement tried to ban coffee—and nearly succeeded.
Coffee beans aren’t beans, they’re fruit pits, making coffee the most-consumed fruit in the United States.
Why isn’t iron added to milk? Iron-fortified milk turns coffee green.
When coffee first arrived in Europe, it was known as Arabian Wine.
The French writer Voltaire drank 70 cups of coffee a day.
In a 12-year study, it was found that coffee does not—as was previously believed—cause high blood pressure.
Been to a coffee-klatsch lately? The term is from the German Kaffeeklatsch, a combination of the words for “coffee” and “gossip.”
One teaspoon of liquid nicotine or 1/2 ounce of pure caffeine are considered lethal doses for a 150-pound man.
Soda Pop
Africa’s largest private-sector employer is Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola was originally green.
Dr. Pepper is said to contain 23 fruit flavors. Can you taste them?
World’s largest consumer of sugar: Coca-Cola Company. They also buy the most vanilla.
It costs the Coca-Cola Company more to buy the can than to make the cola.
Once America’s most popular soft drink, root beer now accounts for less than 4 percent of the national market.
Diet Pepsi was originally called Patio Diet Cola.
In 1900 the average American drank 12 sodas a year. Today it’s 600.
Coca-Cola was first marketed in 1885 as a remedy for hangovers and headaches.
Coca-Cola’s CEO once told a British newspaper that he wouldn’t be happy until people could turn on their taps and get Coke instead of water.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (Bathroom Readers) Page 21