Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up!

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Cotton

  First people to cultivate cotton: a prehistoric community that lived in the Indus River valley in modern-day Pakistan, China, and India around 4000 B.C.

  During the Middle Ages in Europe, people knew that imported cotton came from a plant, but they didn’t know what the plant looked like. Some believed the plants “grew” lamblike animals that produced the fiber.

  The first recorded cotton crop in the United States was in Florida in 1556. Virginia followed in 1607.

  The world uses more cotton today than any other type of fiber.

  After the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s, the U.S. cotton crop doubled. By 1850, the United States was growing 75 percent of the world’s cotton.

  The first machine-woven cotton cloth was made in England in 1730.

  The United States produces nearly 21 million 500-pound bales of cotton each year, nearly twice the production of 1950.

  Cotton’s quality is based on three things: color, purity, and fiber strength.

  During the American Revolution, the British and French were cut off from cheap American cotton, so they bought the fiber from Egypt instead. (After the war, they went back to buying American.)

  Today, Egyptian cotton is softer, stronger, and more expensive than American cotton.

  Cottonseed is crushed to produce three products: oil, meal, and hulls.

  A River Runs Through It

  Around the turn of the 20th century, engineers changed the direction of the Chicago River. It used to flow north into Lake Michigan, but they redirected it to flow south so that waste and debris would float away from the city’s downtown area.

  A “shut-in” is a rocky, narrow, and unnavigable river channel.

  Ten of the tributaries flowing into the Amazon River are as big as the Mississippi River.

  America’s first national river: Buffalo National River in the Ozarks, part of the National Park Service.

  Minnesota is the only state with the source of three main river systems: the Mississippi, St. Lawrence, and Red River of the North.

  There are no rivers in Saudi Arabia.

  The Amazon River is visible from outer space.

  The Mississippi River is only about three feet deep at its headwaters in Minnesota.

  The Everglades swamp is the widest river on earth.

  The Buffalo National River in Arkansas is one of the nation’s few remaining unpolluted rivers.

  Texas’s Colorado River is not the same river as the one in Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. The Colorado River in Texas starts and ends in the state.

  The Rio Grande separates Texas from Mexico for 1,254 miles.

  World’s longest river: the Nile, at 4,132 miles.

  The place where a stream disappears underground is called a “swallet.”

  More Averages

  Worldwide average life expectancy: 64.3 years.

  Most people pass one to three pints of gas a day, in 14 different “episodes.”

  The average adult has about 46 miles of nerves and 10–20 billion miles of DNA.

  A human who sits all day burns 104 calories per hour.

  In humans, the left lung is smaller than the right.

  Rope woven from human hair can support the weight of 400 people.

  During his lifetime, the average man shaves off about 27 feet of hair.

  The average dream lasts about 20 minutes.

  During the first trimester, a human fetus is about the size of a sesame seed.

  Most people suffer about 200 colds in their lifetime.

  Most human scalps contain 120,000 and 150,000 hairs.

  Alaska

  With more than 663,000 square miles, Alaska contains about one-fifth of all the land in the United States.

  Alaska’s 33,000 miles of coastline touch three different bodies of water: the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Bering Sea.

  Alaska’s state sport: dogsled racing.

  Highest mountain in the United States: Denali (aka, Mount McKinley), at more than 20,000 feet tall.

  About one-third of Alaska is inside the Arctic Circle.

  The first European to visit Alaska was Danish fur trader Vitus Bering in 1741.

  During World War II, the Japanese invaded three of the state’s Aleutian Islands, the only time the Japanese occupied American soil during the conflict.

  The Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs 800 miles from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Gulf of Alaska in the south. Since it was completed in 1977, more than 15 billion barrels of oil have passed through the pipeline—about 88,000 barrels an hour.

  About 22 indigenous languages are spoken in Alaska.

  The United States bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for two cents an acre…or a little over $7.2 million.

  In 1927, Benny Benson, a 13-year-old from Seward, won a contest to design the state’s flag. His design: a blue background (to symbolize the sky, lakes, and ocean) with eight gold stars representing the Big Dipper and the North Star.

  Juneau is the only capital in the United States that’s accessible only by boat or airplane.

  The Circle of Life

  An octopus can lay more than 100,000 microscopic eggs at one time.

  Male emperor penguins incubate their eggs on top of their feet. In the time it takes to hatch a single egg, the male loses a third of its body weight.

  Pregnant bottlenose dolphins gestate for a year.

  The only animals born with horns: giraffes.

  Male sea catfish keep the eggs of their young in their mouths until the babies are ready to hatch.

  Typical life span of a cow: 20–25 years. Typical life span of a dairy cow: 3–4 years.

  Mother orangutans nurse their young for up to six years.

  An arctic woolly bear caterpillar can live for 14 years before it turns into a moth.

  The paradoxical frog, which lives in Trinidad, starts as a foot-long tadpole and “grows” into an inch-long frog.

  Human birth-control pills are also effective on gorillas.

  The 200 million wild rabbits living in Australia today come from 12 original breeding pairs.

  In Liechtenstein, dairy farmers publish obituaries for their deceased cows.

  Every year, approximately a billion seabirds and mammals die from ingesting plastic bags.

  Dehydrated brine shrimp eggs can lie dormant for years, but once they’re put in salt water, they rehydrate and will hatch within a few hours.

  On average, a giraffe is about six feet tall at birth.

  Worldy Matters

  World’s oldest country: Egypt, which was unified into a single nation in 3100 BC.

  As of 2009, there are 193 countries in the world.

  Since 1990, 27 new countries have formed. Fourteen of them came from the collapse of the Soviet Union and five came from the former Yugoslavia.

  The country with the largest land area: Russia (6.5 million square miles). The country with the most people: China (1.3 billion).

  Antarctica isn’t a country—it’s a scientific preserve. In 1961, 12 nations, including the United States, signed a treaty declaring it a “zone of peace” dedicated to science. No wars have ever been fought there.

  After gaining independence from Serbia, Kosovo became the world’s newest country in 2008.

  Andorra, which sits between Spain and France, is one of the smallest countries in the world. Although it’s a democracy, Andorra has two princes: one representing Spain and one representing France.

  Get Lost

  In 1959, Tommy Allsup, a member of Buddy Holly’s band, lost his seat on the singer’s ill-fated plane to Fargo in a coin toss. The “winner”: Richie Valens.

  Last reported sighting of Jimmy Hoffa: at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, in 1975.

  When it was shown in China, Oliver Twist was called Lost Child in Foggy City.

  In 1216, England’s King John sent a ship containing some of the crown jewels on a voyage across the North Sea. The ship sank, and the jew
els were lost.

  In 1871, the New York Herald sent reporter Henry Stanley to find missing explorer David Livingstone in Africa. When he found him, Stanley posed the famous question, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

  The average bank teller loses about $250 every year.

  The wreckage from Glenn Miller’s plane crash in the English Channel has never been found.

  No one has ever identified the man who stood in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

  Columnist and writer Ambrose Bierce vanished in 1913 while traveling with Pancho Villa’s army.

  Drew Barrymore wrote her autobiography, Little Girl Lost, when she was 14 years old.

  Thirty-three percent of American fourth graders can’t find their own state on an unmarked map.

  Twenty-four hours from now, you’ll have forgotten 80 percent of what you learned today.

  Who Coined the Term?

  Genes…Danish biologist Wilhelm Johannsen (1857–1927)

  Jitterbug…Cab Calloway (1907–94)

  Carport…Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959)

  Refrigerator…Maryland engineer Thomas Moore (1779–1852)

  Disc jockey…Journalist Walter Winchell (1897–1972)

  Aromatherapy…French chemist René-Maurice Gattefossé (1881–1950)

  Cowabunga…Writers for the 1950s TV program The Howdy Doody Show.

  Third world…Economist Alfred Sauvy (1898–1990)

  Synchronicity…Psychologist Carl Jung (1875–1961)

  Software…Princeton University statistician John W. Tukey (1915–2000)

  Nerd…Dr. Seuss, in the book If I Ran the Zoo (1950)

  The First Family

  John Quincy Adams named one of his sons George Washington.

  Abraham Lincoln and Paul Revere were distant relatives.

  George W. Bush is the only U.S. president to have fathered twins.

  Martin Van Buren’s autobiography does not mention his wife once.

  Andrew Jackson’s parents came from the village of Boneybefore in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland.

  James K. Polk’s family name had originally been Pollock, a common Irish name.

  As an infant, Franklin D. Roosevelt was nameless for seven weeks because his parents couldn’t agree on what to call him. His father liked Isaac, and his mother preferred Warren.

  At 18, Grover Cleveland worked on an uncle’s cattle farm for room, board, and $10 a month.

  Millard Fillmore’s wife, Abigail, established the White House library.

  A Bug’s Life

  There are 1.5 million insects for every human on earth.

  An ant’s smell sensors are located in its antennae and are about as sharp as a dog’s.

  There are more insects in 10 square feet of a rain forest than there are people in Manhattan.

  In 2002, a species of ant from Central America was named after actor Harrison Ford. Why? To honor his work as a conservationist.

  Cockroaches spend most of their time resting.

  One of every three insects in the world is a beetle.

  After bacteria and viruses, insects are the most dominant life-form on earth.

  Termite mounds can grow up to 20 feet high.

  Cockroaches have at least 18 knees, though scientists think they may have more.

  Insects shiver when they’re cold.

  Among army ants, the “general” is always female.

  There are about 140,000 ladybugs to the gallon.

  Butterflies can get drunk on the juice of rotten fruit.

  * * *

  ALWAYS BE PREPARED

  The Boy Scout handshake is done with the left hand.

  Bad Luck

  Classical composers Antonio Vivaldi and Antonin Dvorak both died broke.

  Cyrus McCormick’s 1831 invention of a horse-drawn reaper took almost 30 years to catch on.

  Agatha Christie’s first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was rejected by the first six publishers she submitted it to.

  During Herman Melville’s lifetime, Moby-Dick sold only 3,000 copies.

  C. S. Lewis received more than 800 rejection letters before he sold his first book.

  When he died in 1750, Johann Sebastian Bach was remembered mainly as an organist, not as a composer.

  Dracula author Bram Stoker also wrote children’s stories. Critics called them “morbid.”

  Guitarist Stephen Stills auditioned for the Monkees. (He didn’t get the job.)

  In 1862, abolitionist and poet Julia Ward Howe sold “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” to the Atlantic Monthly for $4.

  Iron Butterfly was scheduled to play at Woodstock, but didn’t. They got stuck at the airport.

  Federico Fellini was nominated for 12 Oscars for writing or directing. Wins: 0.

  Although Mahatma Gandhi was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times, he never won it.

  In his dozen appearances at the Masters golf tournament, Bobby Jones never broke par.

  Mark Twain turned down a chance to invest in Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone company.

  Oops!

  Pro baseball player Richie Ashburn once hit the same fan twice with foul balls…in the same at bat.

  The first time Norma Jean Mortensen signed an autograph as Marilyn Monroe, she had to ask someone how to spell her new name.

  At the 2001 U.S. Open tennis match, Diana Ross lip-synched “God Bless America”…and forgot the words.

  Al Capone once accidentally shot himself in the foot while golfing.

  Jason Patric turned down the lead role in The Firm. The part went to Tom Cruise, and The Firm went on to become the third-highest-grossing film of 1993.

  Raymond Floyd is the only pro golfer to have hit a drive that landed in his own golf bag.

  Will Smith was offered the lead in The Matrix, but turned it down to make Wild Wild West, which tanked.

  Dave Chappelle turned down the role of Bubba in Forrest Gump (1994). He thought the movie would be a failure.

  Moms & Dads

  Winston Churchill’s mother was the daughter of an American millionaire; his father was an English lord.

  Will Ferrell’s father played keyboard for the Righteous Brothers.

  J. Edgar Hoover once gave his mother a canary raised by the “Birdman of Alcatraz.”

  Sean Connery has a tattoo that says “Mum and Dad.”

  Dwight D. Eisenhower’s mother was a pacifist.

  Actress Kathleen Turner’s father was held as a POW by the Japanese during World War II.

  In Rain Man, the “Boy at Pancake Counter” is Jake Hoffman, Dustin Hoffman’s son.

  The father of the United Kingdom’s former prime minister John Major was a trapeze artist.

  June Frances Nicholson, the woman Jack Nicholson always thought was his sister, turned out to be his mother. He was 37 before he learned the truth.

  Charlemagne’s parents were Pepin the Short and Bertha Broadfoot.

  Twister!

  In 1971, University of Chicago professor Dr. Tetsuya Fujita created the Fujita Tornado Scale to classify the destructive power of tornadoes into one of six categories based on wind speed:

  • F0, 40–72 mph

  • F1, 73–112 mph

  • F2, 113–157 mph

  • F3, 158–206 mph

  • F4, 207–260 mph

  • F5, 261–318 mph

  An “inconceivable tornado” is an F6—it has wind speeds greater than 318 mph. There has never been a documented F6 tornado.

  Generally, tornadoes last for just a few minutes and are on the ground for a few miles. But some tornadoes go on for hours and travel up to 100 miles.

  Most tornadoes occur between 3:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.

  Deadliest tornado on record: the Tri-State Tornado. In 1925, it killed 690 people in Missiouri, Illinois, and Indiana.

  Tornadoes hit every continent except Antarctica, but the United States experiences between 700 and 800 per year, more than any other country.

  Almost 40 percent of al
l tornadoes occur between 2:00 p.m and 6:00 p.m. That’s when thunderstorms are also most frequent.

  Contrary to popular belief, opening the doors and windows of a house will not protect it during a tornado.

  On May 3, 1999, the most powerful F5 on record swept through Oklahoma. Top wind speed: 302 mph.

  States in Tornado Alley: Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas.

  Animals Attack

  Most dangerous animal in the zoo, according to zookeepers: the giant panda. The elephant is second.

  Snakes can continue to bite after they’re dead. It’s a reflex action and often contains more venom than a live bite because the snake isn’t controlling how much venom it releases.

  There are more poisonous snakes per square foot on Komodo Island, Indonesia, than anywhere else on earth.

  Of the world’s more than 400 species of sharks, only four have a history of attacking humans: great whites, bull sharks, tiger sharks, and oceanic whitetips.

  The tarantula hawk, a type of wasp, paralyzes tarantulas and lays an egg on the living spider. Then, when the egg hatches, the wasp larva has a fresh, living supply of food.

  A single tiger can eat six tons of meat a year…the equivalent of about 50,000 Quarter Pounders.

  The cougar, whose average weight is about 100 pounds, is such a skilled hunter that it can take down a 600-pound elk.

  Body part most often bitten by insects: the foot.

  More people die from bee stings every year than from skydiving or shark attacks.

  Polar bears can eat 50 pounds of meat in one sitting. Their favorite meals? Ringed seals, young walruses, and beluga whales.

  In an average year, 311 New York City residents report being bitten by a rat.

  Aardvarks have been known to attack and kill lions.

  Translated Titles

  The Sound of Music in Mexico:

  The Rebel Novice Nun

  Bad Santa in the Czech Republic:

  Santa Is a Pervert