• The first stamps didn’t have any sticky stuff on the back—you had to paste, pin, or sew the stamp onto the envelope.
• The U.S. Postal Service processes 38 million address changes each year.
• The largest stamp ever printed was issued by China; it measured 8 ¼ × 2 ½ inches.
• Any unused U.S. postage stamps issued since 1861 are still valid as postage at their indicated value.
• The Russian space station Mir had its own post office.
• A Greek stamp issued in 1954 held the most words ever printed on a stamp: 746.
• Horses, dogs, pigeons, camels, reindeer, and cats have all been used to deliver mail. Only the cat service didn’t work out.
• The oldest working post office, in Scotland, has been in operation since 1712.
KNOTS & SKULKS
You know what a group of cows is called: a herd. But what do you call groups of these animals?
• An army of frogs
• A crash of rhinoceroses
• A gang of elks
• An exaltation of larks
• An unkindness of ravens
• A knot of toads
• A sounder of swine
• A mustering of storks
• A bouquet of pheasants
• A skulk of foxes
• A drift of hogs
• A charm of finches
• A clowder of cats
• A shrewdness of apes
• A murmuration of starlings
• A smack of jellyfish
• An ostentation of peacocks
• A sleuth of bears
• A span of mules
• A pace of donkeys
SOUTHPAWS
ONLY
Don’t read this if you’re not a lefty. (Oh, okay, go ahead.)
• At one time in Japan, a husband could divorce his wife if he found out she was left-handed.
• Four of the last six U.S. presidents have been lefties: Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.
• In ancient Rome, the left side of the human body was considered evil, and the right side good, so the Latin word for left is sinister. The French word for left is gauche, which means crude or socially inept. In fact, the word “left” comes from an old English word lyft, which means worthless.
• Males outnumber females in left-handedness two to one. And female lefties are much more likely to describe themselves as “tomboys.”
• Good news: Lefties make up around 10% of the population but over 20% of Mensa, the high IQ society. Bad news: They also make up more than their share of the populations of prisons and mental institutions.
• Prince Charles and Prince William of England are both southpaws.
THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE MODERN
WORLD
From a list by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
• The Empire State Building, completed in 1931, soars 1,250 feet over New York City. It was the world’s tallest building until 1972 (the title is now held by the Taipei Financial Center in Taiwan, at 1,671 feet).
• Itaipu Dam, built on South America’s Parana River by Brazil and Paraguay, is the world’s largest hydroelectric power plant. It is actually a series of dams whose length totals nearly five miles. Finished in 1991, it took 16 years to build.
• The Panama Canal, a 50-mile man-made waterway across the Isthmus of Panama, took 34 years to build. The amount of digging it required made it the most expensive project in American history up to that time—and the deadliest, too: About 80,000 people died during its construction, mostly from disease.
• The Channel Tunnel, also known as the “Chunnel,” links France and England. It is 31 miles long, and for 23 of them, it runs 150 feet beneath the seabed of the English Channel. There are no cars in this tunnel—high-speed trains whiz through its side-by-side tubes.
• The CN Tower is the world’s tallest freestanding structure, rising about one third of a mile (about 1,815 feet) above Toronto, Canada. A glass floor on the observation deck lets you look down 1,100 feet to the ground. But don’t worry—the glass is strong enough to hold 14 hippos!
• The North Sea Protection Works was a project nearly as big as the Great Wall of China. The Netherlands is below sea level, so this series of dams and floodgates was built to keep the sea from flooding the country during storms. The biggest part of the project, finished in 1986, was a two-mile-long movable “surge barrier” made of 65 concrete piers, each weighing 18,000 tons.
• The Golden Gate Bridge, which connects San Francisco and Marin County, California, was completed in 1937. At 1.2 miles long, it was for many years the world’s longest suspension bridge. Experts had thought that winds, ocean currents, and fog would make it impossible to build, but in fact the bridge was built in only four years. The cables that link its two towers are 36.5 inches in diameter—the biggest cables ever made.
BATHROOM
NEWS
• Boxer Mike Tyson once owned a house that had 38 bathrooms.
• Q: Why are there crescent moons on outhouse doors?
A: Just like today, public toilets 100 years ago were separated by gender, but because many people back then couldn’t read, a half-moon indicated a men’s room and a star denoted a ladies room.
• No more fumbling around in the dark—there’s a motion-sensitive night-light that flashes a red warning when the toilet seat’s been left up, or a green “go” light when the toilet seat is down.
• Greatest distance a toilet has ever been thrown: 23.8 feet.
• Do whales fart? Yes. Survivors of whale farts report that the bubbles are really big and the smell is awful.
• More bad news for swimmers: Blue whales make about 6,000 pounds of poop each day.
• Butterflies don’t go to the bathroom.
• Volcanic ash is an ingredient in some toothpastes.
• Consider this fact the next time you have to use a public bathroom—the first stall in the row is most likely the cleanest. That’s because it’s the least likely to be used.
BASKETBALL
TEAM NAMES
How NBA teams got on the ball and found their names.
• Atlanta Hawks: They used to be the Tri-City Blackhawks, based in the area of Moline, Illinois; Rock Island, Illinois; and Davenport, Iowa. The team was named in honor of Sauk chief Black Hawk.
• Denver Nuggets: The name is a nod to Colorado’s 1800s gold mining boom.
• Detroit Pistons: Fort Wayne, Indiana, businessman Fred Zollner named the team he owned after Zollner Pistons, his car-parts business. The Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons moved to Detroit in 1957, dropped the “Zollner,” and became the Detroit Pistons.
• Indiana Pacers: The name comes from another sport: auto racing. A “pacer” is the pace car that starts the state’s Indianapolis 500 race.
• Los Angeles Lakers: They used to be based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” The team kept the name when it moved to Los Angeles, even though the city has few lakes.
• New Jersey Nets: It’s not only from a basketball net—it was picked to rhyme with two other New York teams: the New York Mets and the New York Jets.
• Utah Jazz: Before moving to Salt Lake City, Utah, the Jazz played in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz music.
• Seattle SuperSonics: When Seattle was awarded a new basketball team in 1967, it was around the time Seattle airplane manufacturer Boeing announced plans to build a high-speed supersonic jet. The plane was never built, but the team took the name “SuperSonics” anyway.
• Los Angeles Clippers: The team used to be the San Diego Clippers. The name refers to the tall clipper ships that once traveled in and out of San Diego Bay.
• New York Knicks. The team’s full name is the New York Knickerbockers. What are knickerbockers? They are pants that are cuffed just below the knee, commonly worn by the 17th-century Dutch settlers who founded New York.
OH, BABY!
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• How do they do it? For about six months after birth, infants can breathe and swallow at the same time. (No wonder they burp so much.)
• Shelby Park, born February 10, 2001, was the first baby to have her birth broadcast live on the Internet.
• Glug! Glug! Disposable diapers hold up to seven pounds of liquid.
• The average baby eats 15 pounds of cereal before he or she is one year old.
• An unborn baby’s heart beats about 140 times per minute.
• The odds of having quadruplets: about 1 in 729,000.
• In the first few days of life, a baby can see about eight inches away from its face.
• Most new babies have blue eyes because melanin (the brown pigment that colors skin, hair, and eyes) hasn’t been fully deposited in their irises or darkened by exposure to ultraviolet light.
• Hey, baby! Try this classic tongue twister: rubber baby buggy bumpers.
• Most American women don’t have their first baby until they’re at least 24 years old.
• In Japan a baby is born every 25 seconds.
WHAT’S ON TV
• Q: What do chimpanzees like to watch on TV?
a) talk shows, b) game shows, or c) hockey?
A: b) Game shows. Researchers are still trying to figure out why.
• On one Japanese extreme game show, a grandmother had to answer questions about pop culture to prevent her grandson from being catapulted into the air by a bungee machine. (She didn’t know the answers.)
• Only one out of 10 middle-aged Americans didn’t watch TV yesterday.
• A chimp named “J. Fred Muggs” was a regular on the Today show from 1953 to 1958. He was also an artist—one of his finger paintings appeared on the cover of MAD magazine in 1958.
• 26% of the men and women who watched the 2006 Super Bowl said that watching the commercials was the thing they enjoyed most about the game.
• The first TV commercial, for a wristwatch, ran in 1941. It cost the Bulova Watch Company $9 to air it.
• Since its premiere in 1969, 75 million American kids have watched Sesame Street.
• Young adults prefer reality shows, while older viewers like police and medical dramas best.
JAPANESE
LANGUAGE
• Japanese is a great language for sound effects. Gata gata is the sound of a chair with one short leg. Pichiku-pachiku is the sound of chattering women.
• Puyo-puyo is the sound of a blob of gelatin wiggling.
• Pori pori is the sound of scratching.
• The Japanese word for “index finger” literally means “person-pointing finger.” The ring finger is called the “medicine finger,” because it’s traditionally used to stir medicine.
• Ever see a couple where the woman is taller than the man? The Japanese call that nomi no fuufu—a flea couple.
• Ringo Starr, the drummer for the Beatles, once appeared on a Japanese advertisement for applesauce. Why? Ringo means “apple” in Japanese.
• Japanese cars: Daihatsu Naked, Honda Life Dunk, Honda That’s, Mazda Bongo, Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear and Pistachio, Nissan Fairlady Z and Prairie Joy, Rickman Space Ranger, Suzuki Cappuccino, Toyota Deliboy and Toyopet, Volugrafo Bimbo, and Isuzu GIGA 20 Light Dump and Mysterious Utility.
ANIMAL
SOUNDS QUIZ
Match the Japanese animal sounds with the animal.
Animal Japanese sound
Dog Mee-mee
Sheep Neeow
Duck Wan-wan
Pig He-heeh
Cat Mo-mo
Bird Qua-qua
Horse Boo
Cow Oui-qui
Answer key
Dog: Wan-wan Sheep: Mee-mee Duck: Qua-qua Pig: Boo Cat: Neeow Bird: Qui-qui Horse: He-heeh Cow: Mo-mo
IN LIVING
COLOR
• Most men prefer white bedrooms, but women tend to like blue ones.
• Fast-food restaurants are decorated with lots of yellow, red, and orange—colors thought to stimulate hunger.
• When shopping for casual clothing, most people prefer blue items.
• The ancient Greeks thought they’d have pleasant dreams if they wore white to bed.
• Crayola Crayons currently produces over 120 different crayon colors, but their paper wrappers come in only 18 different colors.
• It was Shakespeare who first called jealousy the “green-eyed monster.”
• At one time, people thought that blue would ward off evil spirits. That’s why baby boys are dressed in blue. The idea of dressing baby girls in pink came later.
• According to color theory, purple in a child’s room will help develop his or her imagination.
• People who sell real estate say that yellow houses sell faster than any other color.
• It’s been proven: Blue causes the brain to release hormones that calm people down.
PRECIOUS!
• 34% of the world’s gold—about one-third—is mined in South Africa.
• What country uses the most gold? India.
• Approximately 17 tons of gold are used to make wedding rings in the United States every year.
• Diamonds were first discovered over 4,000 years ago in the riverbeds of the Golconda region of India. And until the 1730s, India was the world’s only source of diamonds.
• The Hope Diamond is said to be cursed, because it was removed from the eye of a statue of the Hindu goddess Sita.
• Most expensive jeweled egg: The Fabergé “Winter Egg,” decorated with more than 3,000 diamonds. In 2002 it was sold for $9.6 million.
• The most expensive perfume, Parfum VI, is packaged in a gold bottle covered with diamonds. Cost: $71,380.
• Carat for carat, emeralds—the traditional birthstone for the month of May—are the most valuable gemstones in the world.
• The world’s largest silver nugget was found near Aspen, Colorado, in 1894. It weighed 1,840 pounds!
THE PLANE TRUTH
• The first Boeing passenger plane, the 247, carried only 10 passengers.
• The propeller-driven Black Widow spy plane, designed to give ground troops a quick overview of a particular area, is—surprise!—about the size of your hand.
• The Wright brothers made a total of 105 flights.
• In the United States, there are an average of 240 collisions between airplanes and Canada geese every year.
• On April 18, 2000, 588 military and civilian parachutists from five nations jumped from seven aircraft flying at 12,000 feet over the Santa Cruz Air Base in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
• In 2001 an unmanned solar-powered plane called the Helios Prototype achieved the highest altitude ever reached by a propeller-driven aircraft: 96,500 feet, over the island of Kauai.
• There are 13,387 airports in the United States.
• The Airbus A380 is the largest passenger aircraft ever built, with a wingspan of over 261 feet and a length of over 239 feet. It can carry 800 people.
• Iris Peterson, the oldest active flight attendant, is still flying for United Airlines at the age of 85. She was born in 1921 and joined the company in 1944.
(HAVE SOME)
CANDY
• Hey, who’s eating all the candy? American adults eat 65% of the candy produced worldwide.
• How did Toblerone come up with that triangular shape? They based it on the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps.
• In some circles, licorice is called “sweet wood” or “Spanish juice.”
• The most popular candy in the Netherlands is a salty licorice candy called “Drop” (rhymes with “rope”).
• Back in 1953 it took 27 hours to make one Marshmallow Peep; nowadays it takes 6 minutes.
• President Ronald Reagan bought 12 tons of jellybeans during his eight years in office.
• Every year candy manufacturers make 90 million chocolate Easter bunnies.
• When the first 3 Musketeers Bars were introduced in 1932, the
package included three small, individual bars—a vanilla, a chocolate, and a strawberry.
• Licorice was found in King Tut’s tomb.
• It takes an average of 252 licks to get to the chewy center of a Tootsie Roll Pop.
GORILLAS
• Young gorillas like to play games like Follow the Leader and King of the Mountain.
• Gorillas share 98% of our genes, making them our second-closest relatives (chimpanzees share 99%).
• Gorillas laugh when they’re tickled and cry when they’re sad or hurt.
• There can be as many as 30 gorillas in a troop.
• Every gorilla troop has a leader, a large older male known as a “silverback” because of the gray-silver hair on his back. He makes every decision for the troop—and will protect it to the death.
• Gorillas support their weight on their knuckles when they walk on all fours (unlike monkeys, who use the palms of their hands).
• Adult male gorillas are about 5’6” when they stand up straight.
• Gorillas are mainly vegetarians, although insects make up 1-2% of their diet. They don’t seem to drink anything at all—observers think they get their water from the plants they eat.
• The mountain gorilla is an endangered species; fewer than 400 are left in the wild.
TREES
• The world’s oldest tree—a bristlecone pine in California called “Methuselah”—is 4,789 years old. Experts say it grows .00035 inches every 24 hours.
• What’s the tree most often used in street names? Is it elm? How about maple? Birch? Pine? No—it’s oak.
• There are 128 cubic feet in a cord of wood.
• The tallest tree in the world is a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) that lives in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California. It measures about 370 feet high.
• Sri Maha Bodhi, a sacred fig tree in Sri Lanka, is said to be a descendant of the Bodhi tree under which Buddha became enlightened. It was planted in 288 B.C., making it the oldest living human-planted tree in the world.
Uncle John’s Did You Know? Page 9