Molly
Sophie
Pumpkin
Maggie
Camels are native to North America.
SPORTS SUPERSTITIONS
Why did Babe Ruth touch second base every time he came in from right field? For good luck. Why did Willie Mays avoid it? Bad luck. Apparently some athletes don’t trust their skills alone. Here are some other strange sports superstitions.
BASEBALL
• It’s good luck to spit in your hand before you pick up the bat.
• Never lend your bat to another player.
• If a dog walks across the diamond before the first pitch, that’s very bad luck.
BASKETBALL
• The last person to shoot a basket during the warm-up will have a good game.
• Bounce the ball before a foul shot. That’s good luck.
RODEO
• Always put your right foot in the stirrup first.
• Never kick a paper cup thrown down on the rodeo ground.
• If you put your hat on a bed—you’ll be seriously injured that day.
• Don’t wear yellow.
TENNIS
• It’s bad luck to hold more than two balls at a time when you’re serving.
• When you switch sides, walk around the outside of the court.
• Don’t wear yellow.
Purrrfect double: Scientists cloned a cat in 2001. It’s name is cc—short for carbon copy.
GOLF
• Use only odd-numbered clubs when you start your game.
• Carry some coins in your pocket. That’s good luck.
• Golf balls have numbers on them so you can tell which is yours. It’s bad luck to use one that has a number higher than four.
FISHING
• Throw back your first catch for good luck.
• Don’t change rods while fishing—it’s bad luck.
• If you spit on your bait before you cast your rod, the fish will bite.
• If a barefoot woman passes you on your way to the dock, go home—the fish won’t bite.
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SPORTS SHORTS
• Did you know there were hooligans (troublemakers like the father and son who jumped out of the stands and attacked the first base coach at a baseball game in 2002) at sports games 2,000 years ago? Roman writer Tacitus reported battles between rival team supporters in Pompeii’s amphitheater in the first century A.D.
• Naked fact: Olympians always wore clothing until a runner’s loincloth fell off during a race in 720 B.C. He kept going, and won the race. Like athletes of any era, the losers copied the techniques of the winner, so subsequent competitions were held without clothes.
Music CDs spin 10 times a second (computer CD-ROMs spin up to 100 times a second).
SPACED OUT
You know that the sun provides Earth with heat and light. You might also know that it’s a giant ball of gas. But did you know that the sun contains 99.8% of our solar system’s total mass? Here’s some information about the other 0.2% that’s orbiting around it.
Planets are the largest bodies that orbit the sun. There are nine: four small, rocky inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars); four large, gassy outer planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus); and Pluto—a wayward rock smaller than our moon.
Asteroids are solid chunks of rock or metal that can be as small as a grain of sand or as big as a small moon. Astronomers believe they are left over from the formation of our solar system. Millions of asteroids orbit the sun, mostly in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Could an asteroid hit Earth? Yes. That’s what some scientists think ended the age of dinosaurs.
Satellites are objects that orbit planets. Moons are natural satellites, and there are about 100 of them in the solar system. But there are also thousands of manmade satellites (most of them orbit Earth).
Comets are balls of ice and dust that orbit the sun in highly elliptical (oval-shaped) orbits. When a comet approaches the sun, it warms up and develops a gas tail that can grow to millions of miles long.
Science fact: When pulsars (rapidly rotating neutron stars) were discovered in 1968 mystified astronomers labeled them “Little Green Men.”
THE SINGING BALLOON TRICK
Can science be fun? Absolutely!
Amaze your friends with this trick.
HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED:
• Several large rubber balloons
• Coins of different sizes
HERE’S WHAT YOU DO:
• Put a coin in a balloon, blow it up, and tie the end in a knot.
• Hold the balloon in both hands, swirl it in a circle, and watch the coin spin on its edge inside the balloon.
• Now stop and listen. The balloon will hum while the coin continues to spin around in it.
• Notice that when you spin the balloon faster, the coin travels from the bottom to the center of the balloon. The higher up the coin goes, the higher pitched the sound: the balloon will “sing.”
• Repeat these steps with another balloon and a different-size coin. If you get a bunch of friends together, you can create a balloon symphony.
SO, WHAT’S GOING ON?
The inside wall of a balloon is super smooth, so once the coin starts rolling, it will keep going for a long time. Something else happens as the coin rolls faster inside the balloon. Each time it makes a full circle, the coin makes the balloon vibrate.
The number of times sound waves vibrate in one second is called frequency. And every balloon has its own unique resonant frequency—the point where the vibrations start to resonate and make a musical, humming sound. When the vibration of the rolling coin matches the frequency of the balloon, the balloon “sings.”
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BRIDGES HAVE RESONANT FREQUENCY, TOO
Soldiers are taught to march out of step when they cross a bridge just so they won’t create vibrations that match the bridge’s resonant frequency. Why? If they marched in step, the bridge could break apart.
Marching soldiers aren’t the only danger. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state used to sway from side to side under high winds, which is how it got its nickname, Galloping Gertie. But on one extremely blustery day in 1940, the winds caused vibrations that matched the resonant frequency of the bridge. And it continued for such a long time that the bridge collapsed.
The first U.S. subway system opened in Boston in 1897. Nickname: “The T” (as in “transport”).
THE BIG FLUSH
Don’t let this bit of bathroom science scare you—Uncle John spends lots of time in there and he’s just fine…almost.
IT’S A GUSHER!
When you flush the toilet, everything goes down the drain, right? Wrong. Minuscule water droplets containing more than 25,000 virus-carrying particles fly out of the toilet bowl and into the air. They hover for a few hours in your bathroom and then finally touch down on all surfaces near the toilet. That means they land on your soap, your washcloth, your towel, and even your toothbrush!
PUT A LID ON IT
You could put the top down before you flush… but it won’t help. The next time you lift the lid, a lot of those virus-carrying water particles will still float up into the air.
So what can you do? Put a chlorine tablet in the toilet bowl (it will kill some of the germs) and keep your toothbrush in the medicine cabinet, not on top of the sink. And the next time you brush your teeth, run your toothbrush under hot water first. Don’t spend too much time worrying about the gross germs in your toilet, though—there are far more dangerous germs on a kitchen sponge or cutting board…but that’s another story.
The loudest insect is the African cicada—it’s almost as loud as an airplane taking off.
DUMB CROOKS
More proof that crime doesn’t pay.
THE CANDY MAN
An Arkansas man broke into a bank on a Sunday, only to discover that all the money was locked up tight in the vault. Rather than leave empty-handed, he grabbed a clock radio and a handful of
candy. In addition to breaking-and-entering and burglary, this genius committed one other crime: littering. He ate the stolen candy all the way home and left a trail of empty wrappers on the ground along the way… that the police had no trouble following. What kind of candy did he steal? Dum Dums.
DIAL 1-800-DUMB
Two men from New York robbed a bank using their junk heap of a car for a getaway vehicle. They had spray-painted “FOR SALE” on the side of the junk heap—along with their phone number! Guess how long it took to nab them?
HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER
While waiting in court for his case to appear before the judge, a prisoner decided to escape. He bolted out of the New Liskeard, Ontario, courthouse with the court officer right behind him. He ran through the downtown, onto the town dock, and jumped into the lake.
According to a recent poll, Americans' favorite car colors are white and silver.
When the cops got to the end of the dock, there was the escaped prisoner, begging for help. He’d forgotten one important thing in his mad dash for freedom: he couldn’t swim. The police saved him… and then arrested him. Again.
DUMB AND DUMBER
We saved the best for last. Two British teenagers decided to rob a store. Good idea: They wore masks to hide their identities. Bad idea: They forgot to cut eyeholes in the masks. First, they demanded money… from the wall. Then they bumped into each other and crashed into the counter. Finally, trying to figure out where they were, they pulled off their masks… right in front of a security camera.
Makes sense: One term for a group of giraffes is a tower.
I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM…
…we all scream for ice cream!
ICE AGES
Which is oldest—ice cream, sherbet, or snow cones? Snow cones. The Chinese were making desserts by mixing snow with juices and fruit pulps 3,000 years ago. Sherbet—or “milk ice”—came next. In the late 13th century, Marco Polo brought a recipe for fruit sherbet from China to Italy, but only a few people knew about it and the recipes became closely guarded secrets.
Historians estimate that sometime in the 16th century, some chef—no one knows who—increased the milk content in the recipe and eliminated the fruit…inventing ice cream in the process.
RICH DESSERT
Iced dessert remained an exclusive (and expensive) upper-class treat for a century. Then, in 1686, an Italian named Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli opened Paris’s first coffeehouse, Café Procope—the first business ever to make ice cream available to the general public.
Other coffeehouses around Europe soon started serving it as well. By the mid-17th century, ice cream could be found in all of the continent’s major cities… and by the end of the century, people were virtually addicted to it. In 1794 Beethoven wrote from Vienna: “It is very warm here, as winter is mild, ice is rare. The Viennese are afraid that it will soon be impossible to have any ice cream.”
Medical term for ice cream headache: spheno pulatine ganglio neuralgia.
ICE CREAM IN THE NEW WORLD
Ice cream arrived in America in the late 1600s, and became popular with many of the Founding Fathers, including George Washington (he ran up a $200 ice cream tab with one New York merchant in the summer of 1790) and Thomas Jefferson (he had his own 18-step recipe for ice cream and is believed to be the first president to serve it at a state dinner). First Lady Dolley Madison’s ice cream parties helped make ice cream fashionable among the new republic’s upper class.
CRANKING IT OUT
But ice cream was still a rare treat. Why? Because there were no freezers in the 1700s. Ice was very difficult—and expensive—to get.
Most ice cream was made using the “pot freezer” method: the ingredients sat in a pot that, in turn, sat in a larger pan of salt and ice. The whole thing had to be shaken up and down by one person while another vigorously stirred it.
What? HOWLER MONKEYS CAN BE HEARD CLEARLY UP TO 3 MILES AWAY.
Over the next 50 years, two developments helped make ice cream America’s favorite dessert:
1. In the early 1800s, “ice harvesting” of frozen northern rivers in winter months, combined with insulated icehouses that sprang up all over the country, made ice—and ice cream—cheap for the first time. By 1810 ice cream was being sold by street vendors in nearly every major city in the United States.
2. In 1846 a woman named Nancy Johnson created the world’s first hand-cranked ice cream freezer. With this invention, ice cream was both affordable and easy to make for the first time. By 1850 it was so common that Godey’s Lady’s Book would comment: “A party without it would be like a breakfast without bread.”
WE ALL SCREAM
By 1900 electricity and mechanical refrigeration had given rise to a huge ice cream industry. And it had become so much a part of American culture that immigrants arriving at New York’s Ellis Island were served a “truly American dish” at every meal…ice cream.
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FOUR BASKIN-ROBBINS FLAVOR FLOPS
Fig Newton
Brassicaseus Beer (root beer and horseradish)
Chile con Carne
Prune Whip
Rarest element on Earth? Astatine accounts for about 1 ounce—total—of the Earth’s crust.
WORD ORIGINS
We found the origins of four COMPLETELY RANDOM words and present them to you in NO PARTICULAR ORDER.
SPONGE
Meaning: A porous skeleton inhabited by a group of tiny aquatic marine invertebrates
Origin: From the Latin spongia and the Greek sphoggos, meaning “water growth.”
BOB
Meaning: Nickname of Robert
Origin: From an old Germanic word that means “shining with fame.”
SQUARE
Meaning: A rectangular shape with four equal sides
Origin: From the Old French esquarre, which itself came from the Latin exquadra, which means “out of four.”
PANTS
Meaning: Trousers
Origin: From a 16th-century Italian comic character known as Pantalone, who wore strange trousers. This gave us the word pantaloon, which first meant clown, and then the plural pantaloons, or trousers. The word was shortened to pants when it reached America.
SpongeBob’s birthday is July 14, 1986.
COMING SOON
Inventions you might see in the next 10 minutes or the next 10 years.
DISPOSABLE CELL PHONE
Designed by a British inventor, it’s a wafer-thin computer chip stuck on a piece of paper the size of a credit card. The phone, called P.S. Call Me, comes with a miniature earpiece and is good for only one call… then you throw it away.
DR. TOILET
Imagine a toilet that analyzes your pee and poop and then sends an e-mail to your doctor if it detects anything wrong. It also tells you if you need to add fiber to your diet. Not only that: it plays music, too!
NUTRITION PATCH
Don’t like your veggies? Then don’t eat them, absorb them! The military is working on a stick-on patch designed for extreme circumstances that will send vitamins and nutrients through the skin.
ELECTRONIC NEWSPAPER
Picture this: Your morning paper arrives on e-paper—a flexible “paper” that continually updates itself throughout the day. You download the news and read it, then roll it up and go. Or use it to download a book. Hooray, no more heavy backpacks!
So that’s why they put the gas stations there: Freeway exits in Germany are called Ausfahrts.
ANIMALS TO THE RESCUE
Amazing tales of heroic beasts.
HIP HIP HOORAY
What mammals are responsible for the most human deaths on the continent of Africa? Believe it or not, hippos. But they’re not all killers. Some of them are downright kindhearted—like the hippo a Life magazine photographer saw in Kruger National Park, South Africa.
A baby impala (a type of antelope) had gone to the river for a drink when a crocodile grabbed it. As the croc started to drag the impala under the water, a nearb
y hippo saw what was happening and charged. The crocodile was so frightened that he let go of the impala.
Suddenly free, the impala tried to run, but it was so injured that it collapsed on the edge of the river. The hippo pushed its lower jaw under the dying animal and gently lifted it to its feet, but the tiny impala collapsed again. The hippo put its lips to the little impala’s wounds trying to stop the bleeding, but it did no good. As a final effort, the hippo tried to resuscitate the animal by opening its jaws and taking the impala’s head into his own cavernous mouth, trying to breathe life into it, but it was too late. The hippo stayed with the little impala until it died.
WATCH THE BIRDIE!
When a sparrow crashed into a chimpanzee cage at the zoo in Basel, Switzerland, one of the chimps immediately scooped it up in its hand. A zookeeper who was watching expected to see the chimp eat the bird. But instead of eating it, the chimp just held the bird tenderly and studied it.
Other chimpanzees became curious and came over to see the bird. It was carefully passed from one chimp to another. Each chimpanzee examined the little creature, holding it gently in its hand, taking obvious care not to hurt it. Finally, one of the chimps brought the frightened bird to the front of the cage and carefully handed it to the very surprised zookeeper…who released it.
ELEPHANT BABYSITTERS
Uncle John's Electrifying Bathroom Reader for Kids Only! Page 13