Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up!

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Huh?

  Teddy Roosevelt’s “cavalry charge” up San Juan Hill was done on foot.

  Russia’s “February Revolution” took place in March. The “October Revolution” was in November.

  The Battle of Bunker Hill was actually fought one hill over, on Breed’s Hill.

  The Hundred Years’ War lasted 116 years.

  In Vietnam, the Vietnam War is called the American War.

  Nazi Germany’s Thousand Year Reich lasted 147 months.

  The town of Waterproof, Louisiana, has been flooded many times.

  Virginia extends 95 miles farther to the west than West Virginia.

  When the Civil War started, Robert E. Lee owned no slaves. Ulysses S. Grant did.

  What do Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan have in common? They were all members of the National Rifle Association—and they were all shot with guns.

  Random History

  A 1935 proposal called for joining the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles in a new state: Texlahoma.

  The United States was the first independent country in the New World. Haiti was the second, in 1804.

  First country to officially recognize the United States as an independent country: Morocco.

  Theodore Roosevelt’s 1901 inaugural oath was the only one not sworn on a Bible.

  “Hail Columbia,” the song played for the vice president’s entrance, was once an unofficial U.S. national anthem.

  In 1946, the U.S. Marines were called to subdue the Battle of Alcatraz, the deadliest escape attempt in the prison’s history. Two guards and three inmates were killed, and 15 others were injured.

  What did U.S. presidents John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, and Chester A. Arthur have in common? No vice president.

  The U.S. death toll from the 1918 flu pandemic was so high that it created a coffin shortage.

  In the early 1900s, the U.S. government wanted to build a canal through Nicaragua. But because a Nicaraguan stamp showed a volcano, the United States chose Panama instead.

  First presidential election in which all U.S. women were allowed to vote: 1920. The winner: Warren G. Harding, who’d been a supporter of women’s suffrage.

  In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, 131 million votes were cast. In the final voting for American Idol that same year, 97 million votes were cast.

  On Location

  None of the scenes in Fargo were actually filmed in Fargo.

  The snow scenes in It’s a Wonderful Life were shot on a movie lot in Southern California during a record heat wave.

  Stagecoach was the first of nine films that John Ford filmed in Monument Valley, Utah.

  High Noon was shot in 32 days after only 10 days of rehearsal.

  The mansion in Hannibal is the Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina.

  Amadeus was shot entirely in natural light.

  The Russian epic Doctor Zhivago was filmed in Spain and Finland.

  World War II made filming in Europe impossible, so a Welsh mining town had to be created in Malibu, California, for How Green Was My Valley.

  Oklahoma! was shot in Arizona. (Oklahoma was too well developed when the film was made in 1955.)

  Food Origins

  VICHYSSOISE. Don’t let the French name fool you—this leek-and-potato soup (pronounced vi-she-swaz) has an American origin. Louis Diat, the head chef of New York’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, came up with the cold soup in 1917 while looking for something to serve to customers in the sweltering New York summer heat.

  FISH STICKS. Clarence Birdseye single-handedly invented the frozen-food industry in the late 1920s when he figured out how to freeze food without ruining its flavor, texture, or nutritional value (you have to freeze it quickly). His early machines worked best with food that was cut into slender pieces, and one of the first foods he came up with was a knockoff of a French delicacy called goujonettes de sole: sole fillets baked or fried in bread crumbs and a light batter. Birdseye switched to cheaper fish (cod), fried it in a heavier batter, and scored a hit.

  WISH-BONE SALAD DRESSING. When Phillip Sollomi returned from fighting in World War II in 1945, he opened a restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri. The house specialty: fried chicken. So he named the restaurant “The Wish-bone.” In 1948, he started serving his mother’s Sicilian salad dressing, which was so popular that he started bottling it and selling it on the side. In 1957, he sold the salad dressing business to the Lipton Tea Company, and today Wish-Bone is the best-selling Italian dressing in the United States.

  CORN DOGS. Neil Fletcher wasn’t the first person to dip a hot dog in cornmeal batter and deep-fry it, but he did popularize the dish when he began selling it at the Texas State Fair in 1942. Those early dogs were served on plates, though. It wasn’t until four years later that Ed Waldmire, a soldier stationed in Amarillo, first put the corn dog on a “stick” (the first ones were actually metal cocktail forks, later replaced by wooden sticks).

  O, Canada!

  In Canada, milk is sold in plastic bags as well as in jugs.

  Lacrosse is the official “national summer sport” of Canada.

  Canada has the fourth-lowest population density in the world.

  Studies show that the second-most-annoying thing to Canadians is “Someone reading over your shoulder.” (First is traffic.)

  According to a survey, Canadian teens spend 27.8 percent less time online than adult Canadians.

  Canadian performer with the most celebrity impersonators: Shania Twain.

  Five percent of Canadians don’t know the first two lines of their national anthem. (“O Canada! / Our home and native land!”)

  In his lifetime, Elvis Presley played only five concerts outside the United States—all in Canada.

  Canadian journalist Sandy Gardiner coined the phrase “Beatlemania.”

  Twelve percent of Canadians admit to having kicked a photocopier in frustration.

  The snowmobile was invented in Canada.

  Longest street: Yonge Street in Toronto, at 1,178 miles.

  A Canadian pilot, Roy Brown, is credited with shooting down Manfred von Richthofen, “the Red Baron.”

  Canada is the second-largest country in the world. (Russia is first.)

  Canadian-born Arthur Irwin invented the baseball fielder’s glove in the late 1800s.

  Vocabulary Builders

  What’s an atluk? A hole in the ice where seals come up to breathe.

  What’s a mondegreen? A misheard song lyric.

  What’s the technical name for a kazoo? A membranophone.

  What’s a quidnunc? Well? Well? (It’s someone who asks too many questions.)

  What’s a carriwitchet? A puzzling question.

  What are ephelides? Freckles.

  What is punctate pruritus? The medical term for an itchy spot.

  What’s a bibliobibuli? Someone who reads too much.

  What is nikhedonia? The feeling of pleasure one gets from anticipating victory.

  What’s a pollex? Your thumb.

  What’s the scientific name for heavy winter fog containing ice crystals? Pogonip.

  What’s an olf? A unit of indoor odor equal to one day’s aroma from a sedentary human.

  What’s a mythomaniac? Someone who lies constantly.

  What do you call a nerve cell that has just formed? A neuroblast.

  What’s an onychophagiac? Someone who habitually bites his or her nails.

  * * *

  Studies show: Forty-one percent of Americans say they believe in extraterrestrials who are “much like ourselves.”

  On the Farm

  Farmers and ranchers provide food and habitat for about 75 percent of America’s wildlife.

  The McIntosh apple is named for Canadian farmer John McIntosh, who discovered it in 1811.

  American farms use the rectilinear grid system, with plots laid out in rectangles. Thomas Jefferson came up with this system in the 18th century.

  Cows give more milk when they listen to relaxing music.

 
; Pigs don’t sweat—they have no sweat glands. They cool themselves off by wallowing in mud.

  Temperature of milk inside a cow: about 100°F.

  A cow spends six hours of every day eating…and about eight hours chewing cud.

  In Japan, apple farmers use turkeys to guard their orchards against monkeys.

  Today, the average yield of a dairy cow is four gallons a day more than it was in the 1700s.

  A 1,200-pound horse eats about seven times its own weight per year.

  Eyes & Ears

  The bottom line on a standard eye chart: PEZOLCFTD.

  Ralph Teetor, the man who invented cruise control for cars, was blind.

  Baseball player Rogers Hornsby wanted to preserve his eyesight, so he didn’t read or watch movies.

  Loud noises, aspirin, caffeine, and quinine can all cause tinnitus (ringing in the ears).

  The original back cover of the 1973 Wings album Red Rose Speedway had a message to Stevie Wonder, written in Braille. (It says, “We love ya baby!”)

  Roy Orbison refused to perform without his sunglasses.

  If a man with normal vision and a color-blind woman have children, the daughters will have normal vision and the sons will be color-blind.

  Wearing headphones for an hour can increase the number of bacteria in your ears by 700 percent.

  Liu Ch’ung of China (ca. AD 995) had two sets of pupils in each of his eyes.

  The opposite of “cross-eyed” is “walleyed.”

  Leonardo da Vinci made a sketch for contact lenses in the 15th century.

  One of David Bowie’s pupils is permanently dilated after a friend punched him in the eye as a kid.

  Thomas Edison was partially deaf.

  Actor Lon Chaney was the son of deaf-mute parents, and thus learned early to pantomime.

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was also an ophthalmologist.

  World Leaders & Politics

  Leaders of the First and Second Reichs: Charlemagne and Otto von Bismarck.

  As a member of the British Parliament in the early 1700s, Isaac Newton spoke only once. He wanted to open a window.

  The writings of Confucius were nearly lost when China’s emperor Qin Shi Huang, who unified the country in 221 BC, tried to burn them all.

  England nearly went bankrupt after paying the ransom for Richard the Lionheart when he was kidnapped by Austrians in 1192.

  Shortly after being exiled from Russia, Leon Trotsky stayed with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Mexico.

  Nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer was classed as a security risk during the McCarthy era for opposing the nuclear arms race.

  When Joseph Stalin became general secretary of the Communist Party in 1922, it was a menial position.

  Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Missouri in 1946.

  David Ben-Gurion, who led Israel through two wars, was actually born in Poland.

  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto while in England.

  John Hancock, first signer of the Declaration of Independence, was Boston’s wealthiest merchant.

  The “White Rose” was the name of an anti-Nazi resistance movement in World War II Germany.

  Ho Chi Minh based the beginning of Vietnam’s declaration of independence on that of the United States.

  Literary Lights

  Science-fiction author Isaac Asimov was a claustrophile—he liked small, enclosed spaces.

  First person to call Mark Twain the “father of American literature”: William Faulkner.

  In 1961, when Harper Lee won the Pulitzer Prize for To Kill a Mockingbird, she broke out in hives.

  First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was once the editor of a magazine called Babies, Just Babies.

  Time magazine was originally going to be named Facts.

  First comic strip artist to win the Pulitzer Prize: Garry Trudeau, for Doonesbury, in 1975.

  In 1989, baseball pitcher Tom Seaver wrote a crime novel called Beanball: Murder at the World Series.

  Printing pioneer Johannes Gutenberg was actually a goldsmith by trade.

  Karl Marx once worked for the New York Daily Tribune.

  In 1954, Charles Lindbergh won a Pulitzer for The Spirit of St. Louis, his autobiography.

  Ulysses S. Grant finished his memoirs on July 19, 1885, and died on July 23; the book sold 300,000 copies.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote her first poem when she was eight years old. She wrote her first epic poem (complete with rhyming couplets) when she was 12.

  Winston Churchill worked as a war correspondent in Cuba, India, and South Africa.

  Benito Mussolini was a newspaper editor before he came to power.

  All Mixed Up

  Adversaries during the Texas Revolution (1835–36), Stephen F. Austin and Mexican general Santa Anna once belonged to the same freemasonry lodge in Mexico City.

  Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy” is on their Physical Graffiti album…not Houses of the Holy.

  Meat Loaf is a vegetarian.

  The Lemon Pipers hated their 1968 song “Green Tambourine,” but it was their only #1 hit.

  The Bank of England was founded by a Scotsman, and the Bank of Scotland by an Englishman.

  Chinese herbalists used to prescribe marijuana as a cure for forgetfulness.

  Dolly Parton once lost a Dolly Parton look-alike contest.

  Sigmund Freud’s endorsement of cocaine as a pain reliever resulted in a wave of cocaine addiction in Europe.

  The name of the Soviet propaganda newspaper Pravda means “Truth” in English.

  The New Yorker magazine has more subscribers in California than in New York.

  One inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula: vampire bats from Central and South America. They drink a few tablespoons of blood daily.

  In the horror film Trick or Treat, Ozzy Osbourne plays a televangelist who denounces heavy metal.

  In 2004, John Kerry’s hometown newspaper, the Lowell Sun, endorsed George W. Bush for president…and George W. Bush’s hometown newspaper, the Lone Star Iconoclast, endorsed John Kerry.

  Music Lessons

  During the Middle Ages, murdering a traveling musician was not considered to be a serious crime.

  The earliest known sheet music for guitars was written by French troubadours around 1100.

  First “rock star”: Franz Liszt, in the 1840s. Women used to fight over the Hungarian composer’s handkerchiefs. They wanted them as souvenirs.

  Some Chinese classical music is more than 3,000 years old.

  The world’s oldest known song, written on a clay tablet, is about 3,400 years old.

  In carvings dating to 800, the Norse hero Gunther plays a lute with his toes.

  A 3,300-year-old stone carving shows a Hittite poet playing an instrument that looks like a guitar.

  First European instrument in China: a harpsichord presented by Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci in 1601.

  Klezmer, the name for traditional Jewish music, is from Hebrew words meaning “vessel of music.”

  In 1931, in Hungary, archaeologists found the remains of a water-driven organ dating to 228.

  Until the 1500s, musicians often used bows to play guitars.

  Experts say pounding grain was probably the first kind of intentional rhythm created by humans.

  The Celts and Romans introduced the bagpipe to Scotland.

  Chinese mythology says the founder of music was a scholar named Ling Lun, whose bamboo flutes mimicked birds.

  Plant Kingdom

  More than 1,000 species of plants live in Death Valley, California.

  The scientific name for the tomato: Lycopersicon lycopersicum, which means “wolf peach.”

  Peanuts and peas are members of the same botanical family.

  Only one in 10,000 clovers has four leaves.

  A saguaro cactus can take up to 75 years to grow a side arm.

  Shaggy manes, inky caps, sulfur tufts, and pig’s ears are all types of mushrooms.

>   Invasive exotic plant species infest about 2.6 million acres in U.S. national parks.

  The reddish color sometimes seen on snow at California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park is a living organism called snow algae.

  The world’s largest cactus plantation is in Edwards, Mississippi.

  During the 18th and 19th centuries, most of the apples grown in the United States were used not for eating but to make hard (alcoholic) cider.

  For the Birds, Part 2

  An adult turkey has about 3,500 feathers.

  The walls of the American goldfinch’s nest are so thick that the nest will hold water. As a result, goldfinch nestlings sometimes drown during rainstorms.

  King penguin chicks may go five months between meals.

  An eagle’s bones weigh half as much as its feathers.

  The orange-and-black Sri Lanka junglefowl, a kind of pheasant, looks like and is a relative of the chicken.

  Mallard ducks have 360-degree vision.

  Chickens can’t swallow while they are upside down. Gravity is what makes their food pass through their throats.

  Puffins can swim faster than they can fly.

  Pigeons and doves are in the same biological family, and both are related to the extinct dodo bird.

  Gentoo penguins have pink droppings.

  Some Middle Eastern farmers breed bald chickens. Why? They do better in the heat.

  The Gila woodpecker and gilded flicker are two birds that nest in saguaro cacti.

  More than 40 National Park Service sites are designated as “Globally Important Bird Areas.”

  Rockhopper penguins can travel as far as five feet in a single hop.

  About 50 pairs of bald eagles nest in Florida’s Everglades National Park.

  A hawk can spot a mouse from a mile away.

  Passion for Fashion

  Hollywood fashion tip: wearing yellow makes you look bigger on camera; green, smaller.

  A Colombian company makes a T-shirt it claims is “stab-proof.” Price: $500.

  Until the early 20th century, many boys wore dresses up to the age of five.