Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up!

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Fletcher Davis, who once owned a diner in Athens, Texas, claimed he invented the hamburger in the 1880s.

  Pro golfer Amy Alcott’s day job: short-order cook.

  Alexander Graham Bell preferred to sip his soup through a glass straw.

  Napoléon Bonaparte carried chocolate with him on all of his military campaigns.

  Both Hitler and Mussolini were vegetarians.

  Orville Wright numbered his chickens’ eggs so he could eat them in the order they were laid.

  The Joy of Cooking was first self-published by Irma Rombauer in 1931.

  Singer Chaka Khan once came out with a line of chocolates called “Chakalates.”

  Charles Lindbergh’s only food on his transatlantic flight: Four sandwiches.

  Ernest Hemingway’s favorite food while writing: peanut butter and onion sandwiches.

  In 1954, Alice B. Toklas (longtime partner of writer Gertrude Stein) published a cookbook and memoir called The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. Its most famous recipe was for “Hashisch Fudge,” which included a mixture of fruit, nuts, spices, and “canibus sativa,” or marijuana.

  Creatures Great & Small

  The largest dinosaur was probably the Argentinosaurus. It grew to be 120 feet long and weighed 110 tons.

  Some prehistoric dragonflies had wingspans as big as a hawk’s.

  A hummingbird egg is the size of a Tic-Tac breath mint. A hummingbird nest can be the size of a walnut shell.

  The world’s largest goldfish is 15 inches long. (He lives in Hong Kong and is named Bruce.)

  The largest American alligator measured 19.8 feet in length.

  Largest land invertebrate: the coconut crab. It can grow to be three feet across and cracks open coconuts with its pincers.

  Longest snake in the world: the reticulated python, which can grow to more than 33 feet.

  The annual Banana Slug Derby at California’s Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park is held on a course that’s 18 inches long.

  World’s largest animal…ever: the blue whale. It can grow to be 70 feet long and can weigh up to 200 tons.

  The largest bacterium can grow to the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

  Smallest mammal on earth: the Etruscan shrew. It weighs less than a penny.

  Largest rodent in North America and second-largest in the world: the beaver. (The world’s largest is the South American capybara, which looks like a big guinea pig.)

  The tentacles of the giant arctic jellyfish can grow to be 120 feet long.

  Space Facts

  In space, fish swim in loops, rather than straight lines.

  First Canadian in space: Marc Garneau (1984).

  Animals that have flown in space: dogs, chimps, mice, spiders, frogs, and jellyfish.

  The Apollo 11 lunar module had only 30 seconds of fuel left when it landed safely on the Moon.

  According to NASA, the foods astronauts miss the most are pizza, ice cream, and soda.

  To date, only one man-made satellite has been destroyed by a meteor: the European Space Agency’s Olympus (1993).

  Outer space officially begins 62 miles up.

  Astronauts gave Walter Cronkite an “honorary astronaut” title for his 24-hour coverage of Apollo 11.

  Nineteen years elapsed between the first and second women in space. Both were Russians.

  First African American woman in space: Mae Jemison on the space shuttle Endeavour.

  Foreign Flora

  The mango is the world’s most popular fruit, but the most harvested are grapes, followed by bananas, apples, coconuts, and plantains.

  For 3,000 years, hemp was the world’s largest agricultural crop.

  There were more than 300 banana-related accidents in Britain in 2001. (Most people slipped on peels.)

  A coffee tree yields about one pound of coffee in a year.

  China grows more pears than any other country in the world.

  China also grows the most sweet potatoes worldwide.

  A company in Lancashire, England, grew the world’s tallest tomato plant—it reached a height of 65 feet.

  The national symbol of Wales is the leek.

  World’s smallest tree: the dwarf willow of the arctic tundra, which reaches only about two inches high.

  The jungle’s most pest-ridden tree: the cacao, the source of chocolate’s main ingredient.

  Cacao trees grow only in tropical climates, 20 degrees north or south of the equator.

  The largest (and possibly smelliest) flower on earth is the Rafflesia arnoldii, which grows in the rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra. It’s nicknamed the “stinking corpse lily” and smells like a dead body.

  Just 2 percent of Antarctica’s soil is free of ice, so only hardy plants grow there, including lichens, mosses, fungi, and liverwort.

  Every second, the world’s rain forests lose about two football fields’ worth of area.

  Scientific Numbers

  This page is about 500,000 atoms thick.

  You have to process 88,000 pounds of liquefied air to get a single pound of neon gas.

  At –90°F, your breath will freeze in midair…and drop to the ground.

  Quick! Convert –40°C into Fahrenheit! Answer: –40°F. (It’s the one temperature that’s the same in both systems.)

  A hundred calories will propel a bicycle three miles or drive a car 280 feet.

  A gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds.

  The sun converts more than 4 million tons of matter into energy every second.

  Only 5 percent of the stars in our galaxy are bigger than our sun.

  Earthquakes travel at speeds of up to 4.8 miles per second.

  The Milky Way galaxy moves through space at 170 miles per second.

  Gallons of beer in a standard U.S. barrel: three.

  Tips & Advice

  Housing prices are usually lowest in winter and highest in summer.

  Buy a new car at month’s end; that’s when dealers focus on volume of sales instead of commissions.

  The best time to teach a dog new tricks is shortly after its first birthday.

  Buy shoes in the afternoon, after you’ve walked around for a while. Feet tend to swell after you’ve walked, and you’ll get a better fit.

  Most fish are delivered to stores on Mondays and Thursdays, so the freshest are usually available on Tuesdays and Fridays.

  Best time to visit the emergency room: between 8:00 a.m. and noon on Wednesdays, Thursdays, or Fridays. Mondays and Tuesdays are the most crowded.

  If you want to achieve the best workout, hit the gym in the morning. Your metabolism slows during sleep, so morning exercise jump-starts it.

  Placing a bet? If it is on an underdog, wait until game time. But if you’re betting on a favorite, do it as soon as possible. Most amateurs bet on favorites close to game time, so bookies change the point spread to attract bets on the underdog.

  Best time to have your photo taken: midday. In the morning, your face is puffy from sleeping, and by late afternoon, your face and eyes start to show fatigue.

  Taking a trip and hoping to depart on time? Book the second flight of the day. Statistics show that an airline’s first departure is often delayed because so many other carriers are trying to send flights out at the same time.

  Have a Ball

  A regulation baseball has 108 stitches.

  In the 17th and 18th centuries, it took four years of apprenticeship to become a featherie golf ball maker.

  A good pitcher can make a baseball curve as much as 17½ inches from a straight path.

  There are 122 bumps per square inch on a Spalding basketball.

  Glitter (disco) balls were first used in nightclubs in the 1920s.

  When pitched, the average major league baseball rotates 15 times before it’s hit by the batter.

  In 1935, the L.A. Young Golf Company introduced a ball with a honey-filled center.

  The rubber used to make SuperBalls is called Zectron.

  Average life span of an NBA bas
ketball: 10,000 bounces.

  Early tennis balls were leather pouches stuffed with wool or animal hair.

  American inventor Charles Goodyear manufactured the first rubber soccer ball in 1855. Before that, soccer balls were usually made from pigs’ bladders.

  Golf balls begin to lose their resilience after about a year.

  In 2008, representatives from the Carnival Cruise Line (which created the ball) bounced a 36-foot-wide beach ball—the world’s largest— down Elm Street in Dallas, Texas. On its first day out, the ball hit a car antenna and popped, but it was later repaired.

  Billiard balls used to be made of ivory. One tusk usually yielded about four balls.

  BIG News

  Studies show: There are 7,500,000,000,000,000,000 grains of sand on the world’s beaches.

  Song on Billboard’s Top 40 with the longest title: “Jeremiah Peabody’s Poly Unsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills,” by Ray Stevens.

  A googol is the mathematical term for 1 followed by 100 zeros.

  The full title of Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn album is 90 words long—the longest album title ever.

  It took Michelangelo four years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

  As of 2008, the largest known prime number is 12,978,189 digits long.

  Diameter of Mars: 22,290,026 feet.

  Floccinaucinihilipilification is a long word meaning “the action of estimating something as worthless.”

  But James Joyce’s “Klikkaklakkaklaskaklopatzklatschabattacreppycrottygraddaghsemmihsammihnouithappluddyappladdypkonpkot” from Finnegan’s Wake is even longer. (It means “an act of God.”)

  Supposedly, King Arthur’s Round Table seated 150.

  An estimate of the diameter of the universe: 620,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000 miles.

  Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables contains one of the longest sentences in French literature—823 words.

  Rodin’s statue The Thinker was originally intended to be part of a pair of large doors.

  You can fit 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in a thimble.

  Spring Facts

  In the United States, flooding is most common in the spring.

  Daylight Saving Time, which takes place in March, saves the nation about 1 percent a day on electricity costs.

  Led Zeppelin, Nina Simone, Van Morrison, Frank Sinatra, and Billie Holiday all sang songs about spring.

  Spring astrological signs: Aries, Taurus, and Gemini.

  Children grow faster in the spring.

  In modern times, May Day is celebrated on May 1. But the Celts, who originated the pagan holiday, typically celebrated it on or around May 15.

  In Afghanistan and Iran, the first day of spring is also the start of the new year.

  * * *

  “Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.”

  —Dorothy Parker

  1980s Milestones

  1980: Mount Saint Helens erupted in Washington State.

  1980: Quebec tried to secede from Canada…and failed.

  1981: Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female Supreme Court justice.

  1982: Canada finally became officially independent from Great Britain.

  1983: Top-selling toy: Cabbage Patch Kids.

  1984: Apple launched its first Macintosh computer.

  1984: New York was the first state to require that people wear a seat belt in a moving car.

  1984: The PG-13 movie rating was introduced.

  1985: Bob Geldof and Midge Ure organized Live Aid, the largest television broadcast ever.

  1985: Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union, introducing policies that would lead to the fall of communism there and in Eastern Europe.

  1986: Martin Luther King Jr. Day became a national holiday.

  1986: The Hands Across America benefit—in which 7 million people held hands in chains across the United States—raised $20 million for charity.

  1987: The Simpsons first appeared on television as a short cartoon on The Tracy Ullman Show.

  1988: Japan’s Great Seto Bridge, the world’s longest two-tiered bridge, opened to traffic.

  1989: Actress Kim Basinger bought the town of Braselton, Georgia, for $20 million. (She sold it in 1993.)

  The 7 Chakras

  Chakra (pronounced SHOCK-ruh) is Sanskrit word that means “wheel” or “disc.” According to traditional Indian medicine, chakras are centers of energy, and every human body has seven:

  1. The Root chakra at the base of your spine is all about security. It’s associated with basic survival needs like food (real and spiritual), water, and shelter.

  2. The Sacral chakra in your lower abdomen controls emotions, pleasure, and finding balance in life.

  3. The Navel chakra is located in the solar plexus and has to do with self-esteem and personal power. “Gut instincts” are centered here.

  4. The Heart chakra, in the middle of the chest, is the love center of the human energy system, governing circulation, fluent thought, and a sense of security and peacefulness.

  5. The Throat chakra at the base of the throat controls metabolism and is all about creativity, expressing yourself, and telling the truth.

  6. The Third Eye chakra is located between and slightly above your eyebrows, and governs your powers of insight and intuition.

  7. The Crown chakra at the very top of the head is the pinnacle of the chakras. It has to do with wisdom and being at one with the world.

  World Politics

  The first English Parliament was called into session on January 20, 1265.

  Australian prime minister Harold Holt vanished while swimming in Port Phillip Bay in 1967.

  The so-called Roman salute (an arm held out straight with the palm down) used by Italy’s Benito Mussolini was once common in the United States when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

  There has never been a United Nations Secretary-General from the United States.

  The longest-serving UK party leader was David “Screaming Lord” Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party.

  Lionel Nathan de Rothschild of the British House of Commons was the first Jewish member of Parliament (1858).

  Women in Switzerland didn’t get the right to vote until 1971.

  An American, William Walker, became president of Nicaragua in 1856.

  There has never been a left-handed pope.

  Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) was the only British prime minister of Jewish ancestry.

  According to legend, Harald Fairhair united Norway in AD 872 to impress a girl.

  Mickey Mouse is prohibited from running for office in Comal County, Texas.

  Spencer Perceval (1762–1812) is the only British prime minister to have been assassinated.

  Longest speech delivered to the United Nations: Fidel Castro, in 1960. It lasted four hours and 29 minutes.

  Man’s Best Friend

  Only one dog appears in Shakespeare’s plays: Crab, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

  King Henry III of France often walked the streets with a basket of puppies around his neck.

  When Anne Boleyn was beheaded, so was her wolfhound.

  John Steinbeck’s dog ate the first draft of his classic novel Of Mice and Men.

  At the end of the Beatles’ song “A Day in the Life,” there’s an ultrasonic whistle audible only to dogs.

  Actor William H. Macy once told a reporter that he believed he was a golden retriever in a past life.

  In the 1950s, the dog that played Lassie made $5,000 a week.

  Movie theater owners’ pick for 1926 “Actor of the Year”: Rin Tin Tin.

  Paul McCartney wrote the Beatles song “Martha My Dear” for his sheepdog, Martha.

  Walt Disney owned a poodle named Lady.

  Name of Batman’s dog: Ace the Bat-Hound.

  Although foxes are members of the dog (canid) family, they cannot mate and reprodu
ce with any other canid.

  Zeppo Marx helped to establish the Afghan hound as a breed in the United States.

  Mamie Stuyvesant Fish (wife of a railroad millionaire) once threw a dinner party for her dog…who arrived wearing a $15,000 diamond collar.

  J. Edgar Hoover’s dog was named Spee-De-Bozo.

  Kings & Queens

  There really was a King Macbeth. He ruled Scotland from 1040 to 1057.

  Alfred, king of England from 871 to 899, is the only English king called “the Great.”

  Edward IV—at 6' 3"—was the tallest English monarch.

  From 1918 to 1944, Denmark’s Christian X was also king of Iceland.

  Lady Jane Grey ruled England for only nine days, from July 10 to July 19, 1553.

  Before Louis-Philippe I became king of France in 1830, he lived above a Philadelphia bar.

  Good King Wenceslas was a real king—of Bohemia.

  Between 1978 and 1999, American-born Lisa Halaby was queen of Jordan. She’s better known as Queen Noor.

  Marie Antoinette liked to entertain herself by dressing up as a shepherdess and milkmaid.

  So far, the longest reign of any British monarch was Queen Victoria’s—63 years, 7 months.

  Dieu et Mon Droit (“God and My Right”) is Queen Elizabeth II’s motto.

  England’s Queen Anne became so heavy that she needed to be moved with pulleys.

  Queen Lili’uokalani was the last Hawaiian monarch. She abdicated in 1893 in the face of an American-backed coup d’état.

  England’s King Henry VIII did have a male heir (Edward VI) who was crowned king of England at the age of nine. But the boy died at 15, probably of tuberculosis.

  Jailbirds

  Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote while in prison.

  One of London’s best-known jails was located on Clink Street. That’s why jails are referred to as “clinks.”

  Marco Polo dictated his Travels of Marco Polo to a fellow inmate in a Genoa prison.