Soldiers. And speaking of dangerous, consider the most ruthless ants of all—the driver ants of Africa. They are some of the best killing machines in the animal kingdom. These ants move like an army, in groups of as many as 700,000 marching in rows together across the land. They’ll attack and eat anything in their path—even people!
Polite guys. But don’t panic—most ants are just hardworking guys (actually, most workers are females) going about their daily lives. They are very polite. When one ant wants something to eat, she gently taps her neighbor with an antenna. If there is danger, she taps a little harder as a warning.
CDs, crayons, and toothpaste all contain crude oil.
DECODING HARRY POTTER, PART I
Where does J. K. Rowling get her ideas for the characters and details in the Harry Potter books? Some of them bear an amazing resemblance to characters in Greek and Roman mythology.
The lightning bolt. Harry’s famous scar is the symbol of Zeus, god of the sky and supreme god of the ancient Greeks.
Hermione. Hermione is the mythological daughter of King Menelaus of Sparta, Greece, and Helen of Troy—both mortals, just as Hermione’s parents are Muggles.
Minerva McGonagall, one of the teachers at Hogwarts. Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom and of war and peace. She prefers reason to violence, except when pushed, just like Professor McGonagall.
Argus Filch. The caretaker of Hogwarts seems to know (almost) everything that goes on around the school. He is very much like the mythical Greek watchman, Argus the All-Seeing, who has 100 eyes that never close.
Fluffy, the giant three-headed guard dog. The entrance to Hades, the mythological Greek underworld, is guarded by the monster Cerberus. Like Fluffy, Cerberus is a giant three-headed dog. Also like Fluffy, he is lulled to sleep by sweet music.
J.K. Rowling is richer than the Queen of England.
X-TREME EATING
These men were leaders of our country, sports heroes, and rock stars. They were also the original plus sizes. Here’s how they got to be such BIG stars.
BIG PRESIDENT: William Howard Taft Our 27th president, “Big Bill” Taft was 6 feet tall and weighed over 300 pounds. He was so big that on his Inauguration Day, he got stuck in the bathtub…and it took six men to pull him free. Of course, Taft didn’t start out big. According to some historians, a fall from a runaway carriage when he was nine left him inactive and he started eating out of boredom. Or maybe it was simply genetics. Anyway, he just could not stop eating! For breakfast, he would eat a dozen eggs, a pound of bacon, and stack after stack of pancakes, so when he moved into the White House in 1909, he had a special bathtub built just for him. That tub was so big it could hold four average-size men…and he never got stuck again.
BIG BATTER: Babe Ruth
Ruth once said, “I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.” And he ate big, too! He’d order an omelette made with 18 eggs, plus six slices of buttered toast and three big slabs of ham on the side. For lunch he’d eat six sandwiches. His between-game snacks were chocolate ice cream and pickled eels! And Babe could swallow a full glass of soda in one swallow—ice cubes and all. Of course, he had his limits. After eating 12 hot dogs and drinking eight bottles of soda one day, he was rushed to the hospital (he survived).
Superglue will not stick to Teflon.
BIG SINGER: Elvis Presley
The average adult man eats 2,100 calories a day. An adult Asian elephant has a normal diet of 50,000 calories a day. Before he died in 1977, Elvis—who was anything but average—was eating between 94,000 and 100,000 calories a day! Here’s the Elvis diet:
Breakfast
1 six-egg omelette
1 pound of bacon, burnt
1/2 pound of sausages
12 buttermilk biscuits
Lunch
2 Fool’s Gold Sandwiches Recipe: Each sandwich was made with 1 jar peanut butter, 1 jar strawberry jam, and 1 pound crisp-fried bacon on 1 French bread loaf cut in half.
Dinner
5 double hamburgers
5 deep-fried peanut butter and mashed banana sandwiches
Snacks
Pecan-crusted catfish, smoked ribs, burgers, grits and cheese, pork sandwiches, fried dill pickles, sweet potato pie, bologna cups, barbecued pizza, banana pudding, glazed donuts, and triple-layer fudge cake.
Food for thought: U.S. citizens spent $110 billion on fast food in 2000.
AMAZING COINCIDENCES
Weird things happen all the time. Here are a few favorites from our “freaky” file.
KINGLY COINCIDENCE #1
King George III of England and one of his subjects, named Sam Hemming, were both born in the same town at the same moment on June 4, 1738. They both married on September 8, 1761. Each had nine sons and six daughters. Both fell ill at the same time and died on the exact same day: January 29, 1820.
KINGLY COINCIDENCE #2
King Umberto I of Italy went to Monza, Italy, on July 28, 1900. In a restaurant there, he met the owner—and thought he was looking into a mirror. The two men started talking and discovered that they were both born on the same day of the same year and in the same town: March 14, 1844, in Turin. Each was named Umberto. They each married a woman named Margherita on April 22, 1868. They each had a son named Vittorio. The two planned to meet again, the very next day, but that meeting never took place. Why? The final coincidence: they were both shot—one by accident, and the other by assassination—and both died.
First African-American to own a patent: Thomas Jennings, for a dry-cleaning process (1821).
OOPAS
OOPAs are Out-Of-Place Artifacts—objects found in places where they really don’t belong. Scientists can’t explain how they got there. Researchers are puzzled. Some people think OOPAs are indications that Earth has been home to some very advanced civilizations—more advanced than we are. What do you think?
1. ELECTRON TUBES IN EGYPT
In chamber 17 of the Temple of Hathor in Egypt there is a wall of engravings that look like bundles of electrical wires. According to Alfred D. Bielek, an engineer, these ancient engravings look exactly like modern engineering illustrations. In other crypts, the engravings show the electron tubes with people sitting underneath them. Were ancient people zapped with a kind of electrical radiation treatment? As far as we know, there was no electricity in ancient Egypt, so how could that be?
2. PILLAR OF IRON IN INDIA
In Delhi, India, there is a solid iron pillar that is 1,600 years old. It is over 23 feet high and weighs nearly six tons. In India, where the monsoon rains, winds, and temperatures are so extreme, any other mass of iron like this would have been reduced to rust long ago. Yet this pillar is still smooth and polished. The techniques used to make the pillar are far beyond the abilities of the people of the fifth century, when it was supposedly built. Who were the ancient metallurgists who made this pillar? What happened to their civilization?
Q: Who has more bones, a cat or a human?
PLANE IN EGYPT
Dr. Messiha was in the Cairo Museum of Egypt looking at bird figurines, when he found a small winged object in a box marked “Miscellaneous Items.” Dr. Messiha quickly realized that this little artifact—which came from an ancient Egyptian tomb—was actually a model airplane. Of course, we all know that the ancient Egyptians didn’t have airplanes, but this model had perfectly straight wings and a tail like a modern plane. Ancient Egyptians often built small models of things from their daily lives and placed them in their tombs. Could that mean that somewhere, buried deep beneath the desert sands, there are the remains of a life-size aircraft?
JET IN SOUTH AMERICA
Imagine finding a model of a high-speed aircraft over 1,000 years old. This is exactly what happened to Dr. Ivan Sanderson, in Colombia, South America. He discovered a two-inch-long “plane,” probably worn on a necklace. But it looks like the Stealth bomber. It even has an insignia on the left side of the rudder, precisely where modern airliners pl
ace their ID marks. And the insignia is early Hebrew for the letter B. Did ancient jets fly to Colombia from the Middle East?
A: A cat. Cats have 244—38 more than humans.
COMPUTER IN GREECE
Off a small island in Greece, at the bottom of the ocean, sponge divers discovered the remains of an ancient ship. The artifacts found an the ship were dated between 85 and 50 B.C. Among them was one object of great mystery: Inside a lump of corroded bronze and rotted wood were the outlines of a series of gears like you’d find in a clock. When a scientist reconstructed the machine, he discovered that it was used to calculate the annual movements of the sun and the moon. The device could show the positions of the stars in the past, present, and future…just like a computer. Ancient Greek culture was certainly advanced, but was it that advanced?
CRYSTAL SKULL IN MEXICO
On top of a ruined temple in an ancient Mayan city in Mexico, Dr. F. A. Mitchell-Hedges and his daughter, Anna, found an unusual artifact: a crystal sculpture of a skull. The skull, believed to be about 3,600 years old, is made from a single block of clear quartz. It is about the size of a small human skull and has almost-perfect detail. So what’s the mystery? The skull was carved against the natural grain of the crystal. Carving against the axis would normally make the crystal shatter. And there are no signs that it was carved with metal tools. In fact, by all appearances, the crystal was carved using rough diamonds with repeated applications of water and silicon-crystal sand. But if that’s true, then it would have taken 300 years of round-the-clock carving to complete! And there weren’t diamonds in Mexico at this time. So who carved it and how?
Far-sighted: The Hubble Space Telescope can view newspaper print from 1 mile away.
***
MOVIE TRIVIA: BEHIND THE SCENES
• In the movie Spider-Man, is it actor Tobey Maguire in the red-and-blue suit, a stunt man, or a computergenerated crime fighter? Says director Sam Raimi, “When Spidey is in a close-up, it’s Tobey. When it’s a wide shot of him swinging in, it’s a stunt man. When it’s Spider-Man soaring 50 stories above Manhattan, it’s a computer-generated image.”
• Tobey Maguire had never read a Spider-Man comic book before accepting the role as Peter Parker.
Bad place for a cruise: Most of the Arctic Ocean is covered by ice 14 feet thick year-round.
NOT IT!
Uncle John likes to play tag. Do you? Here are a few different ways to decide who’s “It.”
Ibbidy, zibbidy thig
Dorey, dorey, dominig
On chee, pon chee, dom in non chee
Alaka, balaka, boo-boo-boo
All are out but Y-O-U.
Icka bicka soda cracker
Icka bicka boo;
Icka bicka soda cracker
Out goes Y-O-U.
Eeny meeny popsakeeny
Ah bah oobaleeny
Achy katchy Liberace
Say the magic word.
A peach, a plum,
Half a stick of chewing gum,
And if you want the other half,
This is what you say:
A man, a man
A mandiego San Diego
Hocus pocus diamondocus
Y-O-U are it.
Inka binka bottle of ink,
The cork fell off and you stink,
Not because you’re dirty,
Not because you’re clean,
Just because ya kissed a (boy or girl)
Behind a magazine.
And you are it.
Am stram gram,
Peekay peekay kalay ram
Booray booray rat ta tam
Am stram gram
All are out by Y-O-U.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Catch a tiger by the toe.
If he hollers make him pay
Fifty dollars every day.
My mother told me to choose the very best one,
And you are not IT.
Folk remedy for hiccups: suck on a lemon.
DENTAL FLOSS
Which is older: the toothbrush or dental floss? Believe it or not, dental floss—by about 100,000 years. Grooves made by ancient dental floss have actually been found in the teeth of prehistoric human skulls.
STRING THING
Modern dental floss was officially invented by a dentist named Dr. Levi Parmly in New Orleans in 1815. He strongly recommended that his patients clean the little nooks and crevices between their teeth with a thread of silk.
In the 1940s, those silk threads were replaced by nylon threads; later, the threads were waxed. Now floss is being made with Teflon (the coating on nonstick pans) and Gore-Tex (a waterproof material used in coats). It even comes in different shapes (thread and tape) and different flavors (mint and cinnamon). And Americans must like it—they buy over three million miles of dental floss a year.
TOOTH OR DARE
But wait! Dental floss is more than just a piece of thread to clean the crevices in your teeth. It’s also a chef’s tool, a hiker’s friend, a doctor’s helper, and a prisoner’s pal. Check it out:
• Chefs can use dental floss to cut dough, slice cheese, and remove biscuits that are stuck to baking sheets.
Q: What’s a genuphobe? A: Someone who’s afraid of knees.
• Hikers repair backpacks, tents, and jackets with dental floss.
• Anesthetists sometimes use dental floss to tie a breathing tube in place while the doctor operates.
• A prisoner in an Italian jail used dental floss to saw through the iron bars of his cell. How’s that possible? The bars of most jails are made of a high-carbon iron which is very hard and difficult to saw through, but very brittle. In the 1970s, Italian officials were worried that terrorists with bombs might break into prisons to free their associates, so they changed all the prison bars to a softer iron which would bend, rather than break, in an explosion.
One inmate, Vincenzo Curcio, somehow figured out that the new bars would be easier to cut and when the guards weren’t looking, he sawed his way out using only dental floss.
• One prisoner saved his dental floss for months. When he had enough of it, he braided it into a rope and used it to climb the prison walls…and escape.
How about hot chocolate? In Lynn, Massachusetts, it’s illegal to give kids coffee.
MASTERS OF DISGUISE
Here’s a little mystery for you to solve. All the clues you need are in the story. It’s easy—just use logic and reason (or you can cheat and look up the answer on page 282).
A FRIENDLY BOAST
Uncle John, his sidekick, J. Porter Newman, and their friend Mr. Ollie Tidball received invitations to the annual Bathroom Readers’ Institute Costume Ball. They were thrilled. Each was certain that his costume would be better than the others.
“I am the Master of Disguise,” said Uncle John. “When I’m in costume, no one will be able to guess my true identity.”
“Ha!” replied J. Porter Newman. “My costume will be so good, my own mother won’t recognize me. For I am the true Master of Disguise.”
Mr. Tidball was quiet but firm: “Sorry to disagree, but my costume will be the best. Nary a soul will be able to guess who I am—you see, I am the Master.”
THE CHALLENGE
Elbow Room, Uncle John’s talking dog, had been listening to them all boast and growled, “Grrrrr-racious. I bet I’ll be able to guess who you are within two minutes—without sniffing you.”
In your lifetime, you’ll spend the same amount of time eating as you do blinking.
“Flying flushes!” cried Uncle John. “Is that a challenge?”
“Yep!” yipped Elbow Room.
WHO’S WHO?
On the night of the costume ball, Elbow Room waited in the great hall of the Bathroom Readers’ Institute with his friend Hairball, the coughing cat.
The three Masters of Disguise—a ferocious-looking gorilla, a purple Teletubby, and a knight in shining armor—walked in. Hairball carefully licked one paw and purred, “I recognize them. T
he gorilla is Uncle John, the knight is Tidball, and the Teletubby is Newman.”
Jeffrey, the butler, who had helped the men into their costumes and knew which was which, declared, “Sorry! All wrong!” Humiliated, Hairball promptly left the hall.
Now it was up to Elbow Room. He didn’t like to admit it, but the disguises were good—maybe too good.
Two minutes were almost up, when the gorilla leaned over to the man beside him and whispered, “Looks like we fooled them, eh, Tidball?”
“Hush!” hissed the other man. “You’ll give us away!”
Elbow Room immediately howled, “I’ve got it! I’ve flushed you out! I know who’s who!”
Do you know? Turn to page 282 to find out.
The word purple comes from purpura, the Latin name of a purple shellfish used to make dye.
STAR POWER
Imagine starting the new school year by demanding a desk with a view, three six-packs of soda, a bowl of purple jelly beans, and a clean pair of socks. Now imagine your new teacher saying, “Of course! Is there anything else?”
SPOILED ROTTEN
Celebrities have contracts with a special section called a rider. The rider lists all the extra things the celebrity wants before he or she will go to work. And some stars want and need some very odd things. Here are a few examples:
Shania Twain
• Mori-Nu silken-style soft tofu
• Four bananas and three papayas
• Organic cheese popcorn
(Note: She travels with a bomb-sniffing patrol dog.)
Marilyn Manson
• A box filled with fresh kitty litter (in case the bathrooms are out of order)
Uncle John's Electrifying Bathroom Reader for Kids Only! Page 7