Ian Fleming offered the role of Dr. No to actor Noel Coward, who replied by telegram: “Dr. No? No! No!!”
The original title of License to Kill (1989): License Revoked.
Living in America
Each year, 30,000 people in the United States are seriously injured by exercise equipment.
Americans will spend more on cat food this year than on baby food.
How many times will you move in your life? If you’re an average American, 11.
A 1995 poll found that 37 percent of Americans thought the Ryder Cup golf competition was a horse race.
Since 1935, the United States has lost 4.7 million farms.
Americans recycle enough paper every day to fill a 15-mile-long train of boxcars.
Approximately 80 percent of 10-year-old girls in the United States will go on a diet this year.
One in every eight Americans lives in California.
There is enough water in American swimming pools to cover the city of San Francisco seven feet deep.
The three biggest party days in the United States: New Year’s Eve, Super Bowl Sunday, and Halloween.
Roughly 40 percent of U.S. energy comes from petroleum.
This year, Americans will throw away more than 100 million cell phones.
There are three times as many TV sets in the United States as there are people in the United Kingdom.
Sixty percent of Americans can name the Three Stooges. Seventeen percent can name three Supreme Court justices.
In the United States, people choke on toothpicks more often than on any other object.
Green Things
KERMIT THE FROG. Puppeteer Jim Henson created Kermit in 1955 as the main character on a local television show called Sam and Friends. Once he got the job on Sesame Street, though, Kermit became a superstar. Today, he’s known all over the world by a variety of names: Gustavo in Spain, René the Frog in Latin America, and Kamel in the Middle East.
GRANNY SMITH APPLES. In the late 1860s, a woman named Maria Ann Smith and her husband Thomas owned an orchard outside of Sydney, Australia. The Smiths cultivated apples, and in 1868, they accidentally cross-pollinated a new green apple hybrid that they named Granny Smith, after Maria. Although the Smiths never saw their apple variety become popular in their lifetimes, it eventually traveled beyond their orchard to New Zealand, England, and finally to the United States in the 1970s.
OSIRIS. According to the ancient Egyptians, green was the color of resurrection and immortality. That’s why Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife, was often portrayed as having green skin.
THE LIBYAN FLAG. Libya has had a solid green flag since 1977. Why that color? In Islamic culture, green represents the lush paradise Muslims believe awaits them in the afterlife. It was also the color of the banner the prophet Muhammad carried. Many Islamic countries have green on their flags, but Libya’s is the only one in the world that’s a solid block of color.
JACK IN THE GREEN. In England, May Day parades usually feature this character, a person wearing a costume covered in foliage. The Jack in the Green tradition dates back to the 16th century, when English people dressed themselves up in leaves or flower garlands to celebrate the coming summer with May Day festivals. One year, a group of chimney sweepers completely covered someone with flowers, leaves, and branches. They called him “Jack in the Green,” and over time, he became a recurring character at May Day festivals around the country…and the young sweepers became a regular part of the festivals’ entertainment.
The Jack tradition faded in the late 1800s, when England’s government made it illegal for children to work as chimney sweepers. The young boys who’d provided so much of the festivals’ entertainment could no longer perform. But in the 1980s, Jack in the Green made a comeback. Today, the best-known Jack competition takes place every May 1 in the town of Hastings, where people gather to celebrate Jack and usher in the summer.
THE GACHALA EMERALD. Weighing 858 carats (about half a pound), this is the world’s largest uncut emerald. Miners in Colombia pulled it out of the ground in 1967, and today it’s on display at the Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C.
BARIUM SALTS. This is the chemical that makes fireworks shoot green sparks.
THE UNITED TASMANIA GROUP. Considered to be the first “green” party in the world, the United Tasmania Group formed in 1972 in Australia. It lasted only five years and had limited success, but many of the United Tasmania Group’s candidates moved on to support the Tasmanian Greens and Australian Greens, two mainstream parties still around today.
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“They’ll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like; but that particular green…never.”
—Pablo Picasso
At the Oscars
Longest Oscar acceptance speech: Greer Garson in 1943, at five and a half minutes.
Jayne Mansfield “popped out of her dress” during the 1957 Oscars.
In 1958, Joanne Woodward accepted an Academy Award in a gown she made herself for $100.
Bing Crosby, the winner of the Oscar for Best Actor in 1944, didn’t want to attend the Oscar ceremony. He was golfing when studio assistants found him and made him go.
Only four horror films have been nominated for Best Picture.
First actor to refuse an Oscar: George C. Scott (for Patton in 1970).
James Dean was the first actor to receive a posthumous Oscar nomination, in 1955.
Shortest Oscar-winning performance: Anthony Quinn’s eight minutes as Paul Gauguin in Lust for Life (1956).
Director Alfred Hitchcock never won an Academy Award.
Only seven comedies have won Best Picture Oscars.
Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks are the only actors to win the Oscar for Best Actor two years in a row.
The only Best Picture nominee based on a TV show: The Fugitive (1993).
In 1994, Whoopi Goldberg became the first woman to host the Academy Awards.
The only film for which John Wayne won an Oscar: True Grit (1969).
First film to win more than 10 Oscars: Ben-Hur (1959).
Agricultural History
In their ancient form, carrots were purple, not orange. The Dutch developed orange carrots in the 1600s.
Ancient Greeks believed that onions were an aphrodisiac.
Romans cultivated asparagus as early as 200 BC.
Tulips aren’t native to Holland. They were brought over from Turkey in the 1500s.
Originally, jack-o’-lanterns were made from turnips.
As American as apple pie? Apples are not native to North America; they were brought over from Europe and western Asia.
Chinese gooseberries didn’t sell well in the United States until the 1950s and ’60s, when grocers renamed them “kiwis.” (Calling them “Chinese” had negative associations because of the Cold War.)
Henry Ford was fascinated with soybeans and used them to make automotive paint and parts. (He also grew marijuana, hoping to make new plastics from it.)
The first apple orchard in North America was probably in Boston.
Once upon a time, pumpkins were recommended for removing freckles and curing snake bites.
The sweet potato was once a rare delicacy, believed to be a potent aphrodisiac.
The first vegetables grown in space: potatoes, in 1995.
Shortcake has been around since the 1500s in England, but strawberry shortcake is an American tradition that dates to the mid-1800s, when people held strawberry parties to celebrate the start of summer.
The First Woman to…
…pitch for a men’s pro baseball team: Ila Borders of the St. Paul Saints (1997).
…swim the English Channel: Gertrude Ederle (1926). It took her 14 hours, 39 minutes.
…become a professional bullfighter: Conchita Cintron. She began her career in 1934 at age 12.
…compete in the Indianapolis 500: Janet Guthrie (1977).
…have her work published in A
merica: Anne Bradstreet (1650).
…travel into space: the Soviet Union’s Valentina V. Tereshkova (1963).
…receive top billing and to headline her own country-music show: Patsy Cline (1962).
…have her artwork displayed at the White House: Georgia O’Keeffe (1997).
…conduct at New York’s Metropolitan Opera: Sarah Caldwell (1976).
…lead a jazz band: Sophie Tucker’s Five Kings of Syncopation (1914).
Don’t Be Scared
Phobatrivaphobia is a fear of trivia about phobias.
Helminthophobia is the fear of worms.
Fear of vegetables is known as lachanophobia.
What is phobophobia? Fear of phobias.
The fear of Fridays is called friggaphobia.
Stenophobia is the fear of narrow spaces.
What is autophobia? Fear of being alone.
What is blennophobia? Fear of slime.
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FAMOUS FEARS
• Composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky suffered from a paralyzing fear that his head would fall off.
• Queen Elizabeth I of England was afraid of flowers.
• Scientist Nicola Tesla found pearls revolting—and wouldn’t allow his female employees to wear them.
All in a Day’s Work
Charles Dickens’s son Francis was a Canadian Mountie.
President George W. Bush spent a summer selling sporting goods for Sears.
The kiss between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson at the end of Lost in Translation was not in the script. It was a last-minute ad-lib by the actors.
Ronald Reagan once appeared in a GE Theater production called A Turkey for President.
Dan Aykroyd co-owns a Toronto bar called Crooks. The other owners: several Toronto cops.
Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely sat down; he even had a podium in his office that he stood behind.
Young Calvin Coolidge earned spare cash selling apples and popcorn balls at town meetings.
Harrison Ford was offered the part of Mike on All in the Family, but turned it down because he felt Archie Bunker was too racist.
Jerry Springer worked on Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign staff.
Bees & Things
One beehive can house as many as 40,000 bees.
Only female mosquitoes bite; they need the blood to feed their eggs. Males’ mouthparts aren’t equipped to suck blood.
Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
Mosquitoes can hold twice their weight in blood.
A housefly carries as many as 6 million bacteria on its body.
Bee stings are acidic; wasp stings are alkaline.
Mosquitoes aren’t attracted to blood. It’s the carbon dioxide you breathe out and the lactic acid secreted by glands in your skin that they smell.
Most cicadas have red eyes.
The eggs of some species of mosquitoes can survive in a dried-up state for five years.
An airborne housefly only travels at about 4.3 mph.
A large swarm of desert locusts can consume 20,000 tons of vegetation in one day.
Advertising
First newspaper advertisement: published in the Boston News-Letter in 1704, it was looking for a buyer for a Long Island estate.
First commercial jingle: “Have You Tried Wheaties?” for General Mills (1926). It was a last-ditch effort to save the brand, but radio listeners loved the song and singers (the Wheaties Quartet) so much that General Mills decided to keep making the cereal.
In the 1920s and 30s, Burma Shave put up hundreds of humorous billboards along American roads to promote its new brushless shaving cream. Each joke usually consisted of five or six signs that drivers read in succession. One example: Ben met Anna / Made a hit / Neglected beard / Ben-Anna split / Burma Shave.
In the early 1970s, the Coca-Cola jingle “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” was a #7 hit in the United States and rose to #1 on the charts in Great Britain.
One of the most influential political ads in history (the “Daisy Ad”) featured a little girl plucking flower petals and then a countdown to nuclear war. It aired only once—on Labor Day 1964—but is said to have ensured Lyndon Johnson a victory in that year’s presidential election over Barry Goldwater, who had said he’d be willing to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam.
All in the Family
Fidel Castro’s daughter Alina defected to the United States in 1993.
Country singers Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle are sisters.
Joseph Williams, son of film composer John Williams, was a member of the 1980s band Toto.
Timothy Leary was the godfather of actress Winona Ryder.
Marlon Brando’s son Miko was once Michael Jackson’s bodyguard.
Of Johann Sebastian Bach’s 20 children, 10 died in childhood. Four became composers and musicians.
Wilbur and Orville Wright had two other brothers: Lorin and Reuchlin.
Elton John is Sean Lennon’s godfather.
Blues-playing brothers Edgar and Johnny Winter are both albinos.
Four of Mary Todd Lincoln’s brothers fought for the Confederacy.
Painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s son, Jean, was a renowned filmmaker.
Baseball pitcher Barry Zito’s uncle is actor Patrick Duffy, who starred in Dallas.
Famous Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker married two sisters and had 21 children between them.
Kirsten Dunst’s production company is called Wooden Spoon Productions…because her grandmother always carried one to keep the grandkids in line.
Harpo Marx once tried to adopt Shirley Temple.
Summer Facts
1816 is often called the “Year Without Summer” because of an abnormally long cold spell in Europe, Canada, and the northeastern United States. That summer, frost killed so many crops that prices for staples like oats and grain rose more than 700 percent, and a June snowstorm dropped a foot of snow on Quebec City, Canada.
Summer school holidays in Australia begin a few weeks before Christmas.
If you stand in front of the Sphinx in Egypt and look west on the summer solstice, the sun will set directly between the two Great Pyramids.
There are more than 10,000 competitors and 300 events in the Summer Olympics.
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream takes place on the summer solstice.
Americans take more than 600 million trips between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Of those, 97 percent are within the United States.
During the 19th century, schoolchildren in the United States didn’t have a summer break like they do now. Kids at rural schools attended spring and winter terms so they could help out with summer and fall harvests. Urban children typically went to school for 48 weeks a year, with one week off every three months. But in the late 1800s, reformers came up with summer break as a way to put all kids on the same schedule and as a compromise to solve two problems: 1) They felt rural schools were subpar and needed more oversight and structure, and 2) Some researchers worried that too much schooling in childhood without a sufficient break led to insanity later in life.
Notable Numbers
Eighty percent of millionaires drive used cars.
About 40 percent of American adults say they “change into something more comfortable” to watch TV.
Seventy percent of Americans have brown hair.
One in 20 people is born with an extra rib.
Americans spend more than 2 billion hours a year mowing their lawns.
Only 55 percent of Americans know that the sun is a star.
Chances you’ll die in an accident: one in 77. Chances you’ll be murdered: one in 211.
Toast lands butter-side down 62 percent of the time.
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DID YOU KNOW?
Bulrushes are papyrus plants…the same stuff the ancient Egyptians used to make paper.
A Mystical Potpourri
There are approximately 3,500 astronomers in the United States…and more than 15,000 astr
ologers.
Roughly 15 percent of the population of New Orleans practices voodoo.
Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, is known as the “Troll Capital of the World.” (There are troll sculptures all over town.)
Between 1520 and 1630, about 30,000 people were reported to French authorities for being werewolves.
Belleville is the “Unidentified Flying Object Capital” of Wisconsin.
Before the advent of Christianity, “witches” in Europe were considered to be spiritual advisers and healers.
The Salem witch trials resulted in the executions of 14 women and six men.
The earliest known images of witches flying on broomsticks date to about 1440, in France.
England’s Stonehenge is 1,500 years older than Rome’s Colosseum.
There were 736 documented UFO sightings in Canada in 2006.
Earliest documented sighting of the Loch Ness Monster: AD 565.
On an average day, at least one UFO abduction is reported in California.
Two things that might make you become a vampire, according to myth: to be born with red hair or to be promiscuous.
While Warren G. Harding was running for president, his wife, Flossie, visited a clairvoyant. She predicted that he was “a shoo-in” but that he would die in office. (He did.)
Music Milestones
In 1925, Billboard magazine stated that the new medium of radio could be good for record sales if songs were not “killed by being radio’d to death.”
First platinum single (with 2 million copies sold): “Disco Lady,” by Johnnie Taylor (1976).
Bill Haley’s “Crazy Man, Crazy” was the first rock ’n’ roll single to make the Billboard Top 20.
First live musical performance to use an electric light show: a recitation of Alexander Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy (1908).
First documented use of an electric guitar in a performance: Gage Brewer in Wichita, Kansas, in 1932.
First record to sell a million copies: “Whispering,” by jazz artist Paul Whiteman (1920).
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! Page 23