The Extraordinary Book of Useless Information (12 page)

Barack Obama's father, who went to Hawaii from his native Kenya on a scholarship, never told Obama's mother that he was already married when they wed.

Obama's father left the family in Hawaii in 1963, when Barack was two, to study at Harvard. Obama only saw his father one more time before he died in 1985.

Obama's father died in a car accident.

In 1967, Obama's mother married Muslim Lolo Soetoro, who was from Indonesia.

SECOND BANANAS

As vice president, John Adams cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate a record twenty-nine times.

Thomas Jefferson's second vice president was George Clinton, who is no relation to Bill Clinton. Jefferson's attorney general was Levi Lincoln Sr., who was distantly related to Abraham Lincoln.

The first vice president to be invited to cabinet meetings was Calvin Coolidge, invited by Warren G. Harding.

When Ronald Reagan ran for president, he first offered the position of vice president to Gerald Ford, who declined. George H. W. Bush was then chosen.

President George H. W. Bush considered Clint Eastwood as his running mate.

PICTURE THIS

James Monroe is pictured holding the flag in the famous painting
Washington Crossing the Delaware
.

W
hat in the
W
orld?

FEELING A LITTLE IL

North Korea has the fourth-largest army in the world.

About one-quarter of North Korea's gross domestic product is spent on its military.

One can be executed in North Korea for making an international phone call or distributing Bibles. Public executions are held in stadiums, before thousands of spectators.

North Korea's late leader Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) had seventeen palaces throughout the country. He had live lobster airlifted to his personal train whenever he traveled outside North Korea. Citizens believed that he could control the weather by his mood, and he boasted of getting three or four holes-in-one whenever he golfed.

DOWN UNDER

There are about 1 million camels wandering Australia's deserts.

“Bluey” is a nickname for redheads in Australia.

The Dingo Fence, built between 1880 and 1885 to keep dingoes out of South Eastern Australia, is the longest fence in the world—at 3,488 miles.

Australia's Nullarbor Plain is the world's largest single piece of limestone—seventy-seven thousand square miles.

The longest straight railroad line in the world is 297 miles and is in the Nullarbor Plain.

SHOP TILL YOU DROP

The Dubai Mall, in the United Arab Emirates, is the largest shopping center in the world, boasting 1,200 stores and 160 eateries.

SEEING RED

There are twice as many cell phones in China as there are people in America.

135 million Chinese live on less than one dollar a day.

Seventy-seven percent of the world's pirated goods are made in China.

One-third of Chinese adults live with their parents.

Congestion on China's city streets is so bad that Beijing holds a lottery each month to assign twenty thousand license plates, out of a total of nine hundred thousand applications.

More than 30 million Chinese live in caves. They dig holes into soft soil in the sides of cliffs.

The Chinese spend 30 percent of their income on clothes. Americans spend 8 percent.

China has the world's largest graphite deposits and is the leading producer of pencils.

Cordyceps
, a fungus that grows on worms, is a natural remedy used in China to improve strength and endurance. A small box sells for about three thousand dollars.

Pills containing a powder made from chopped-up and dried fetuses and newborn babies are smuggled into South Korea from China to allegedly boost sexual performance.

BABY BOOM

Each day there are 44,727 births in China and 26,106 deaths. Each day in India there are 76,517 births and 24,826 deaths.

A CUT ABOVE

Surat, India, is the world's largest diamond-cutting center.

It is estimated that Zimbabwe's government, led by President Robert Mugabe, has stolen at least $2 billion worth of diamonds from that country's mines.

CALL BEFORE DIGGING

In 2011, the country of Armenia lost its Internet service for twelve hours after a seventy-five-year-old woman severed the cable supplying service from Georgia with a shovel while scavenging for scrap metal.

MCDICK'S

There are numerous nicknames for McDonald's in various countries around the world. For example:

McDick's is used in Canada.

Macca's is used in Australia and New Zealand.

McDo is used in France.

McDoh is used in Quebec.

McDoof and Mekkes are used in Germany.

Makudo is used in Japan.

Mak Kee is used in Hong Kong.

Donken is used in Sweden.

Meki is used in Hungary.

Mec is used in Romania.

NO-NO NAMES

In Germany, names must indicate the sex of a child. In Iceland, if a name is not already on the National Register of Persons, an application must be reviewed by a federal committee to decide the name's suitability. New Zealand has a list of banned names.

MACHO MEN

Mustache implants are the hot new surgery for men in the Middle East, where thick, bushy 'staches are a symbol of male power and virility. The procedure involves transplanting hair from another part of the body and costs about seven thousand dollars.

MIND YOUR MANNERS

In southern China, flipping a whole fish over while eating it is considered bad luck.

Chileans don't eat anything with the fingers, not even French fries or pizza.

Italians don't drink cappuccino after 3 p.m.

The British always pass the port to the left.

When toasting someone in Germany, it is expected that you look the person directly in the eyes. To not do so is considered bad form, and superstition says both parties will be cursed to seven years of bad luck in the bedroom. Also, you should never ask for a refill before your entire glass is drained.

In France it is thought of poorly to pour oneself a refill without first offering the rest of the party one.

In Latin America it is considered bad luck to pour a drink with the left hand.

In Korea, women can only pour men's drinks, not other women's.

In China, France, Japan, and Saudi Arabia it is considered rude to blow one's nose in public. The Chinese and the Japanese also find the idea of handkerchiefs to be repellent.

NO-MAN'S-LAND

According to the Madrid Protocol of 1991, no country can own Antarctica and no mining, drilling for oil, hotels or resorts are allowed.

MONEY DOESN'T BUY EVERYTHING

In 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man and a frequent critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, was arrested on what many believe to be politically motivated charges and sent to a prison camp, where he still remains.

RELIGION ROUNDUP

Mexico has the world's second-largest Catholic population.

One percent of the population of Japan is Christian.

There are 2.2 billion Christians in the world and 1.6 billion Muslims.

In 1910, there were just 9 million Christians in sub-Saharan Africa. That number had shot up to 516 million by 2011.

The Coptic Orthodox Christian Church selects a new pope by having a blindfolded altar boy pick a name from three that are placed into a large glass container.

WAYS TO GO

Belarus is the only country in Europe that has the death penalty.

Only twenty-one countries worldwide have capital punishment—Belarus, Botswana, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Tonga, the United States, and Vietnam.

Up until the nineteenth century, execution by elephants was used in parts of Asia, particularly in India. The beasts would crush or dismember the condemned in public displays that could be carried out swiftly or prolonged as a form of torture.

Death by slow slicing was a form of execution/torture that was employed in China from 900 to 1905. It involved removing portions of the body with a knife over an extended period of time, sometimes several days.

ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?

About 60 percent of young men in Japan don't have girlfriends and 36 percent of sixteen– to nineteen-year-old males report having no interest in sex.

LOONEY LAWS

Although prostitution is legal in Iceland, strippers are outlawed.

In Afghanistan, a woman who gets raped may be charged with adultery and sent to prison. In some cases, she is encouraged to marry her attacker to restore her “honor.” The babies of raped women serve the prison sentence with their mothers.

In the United Kingdom it is illegal for water bottlers to state that water can help prevent dehydration. This nonsensical ruling was handed down by the European Union Department of Health. Violators are subject to two years in jail.

In 2011, Saudi Arabia passed a law making it legal for women to work in lingerie stores. Before this, only men could work in malls and stores, since women are not allowed to mingle with men in public. Embarrassed female shoppers, accompanied by their equally embarrassed male guardians, had to shop together for undergarments sold by male salesclerks.

Saudi Arabia is the only country where it is illegal for women to drive.

It is now illegal to eat or drink in public areas around some of Rome's significant historical tourist attractions. Violators are subject to a $645 fine.

LOONIE TOONS

Canada uses one-dollar and two-dollar coins, known as loonies and toonies. The loonie bears an image of a common loon (a Canadian bird) and the toonie has the image of a polar bear.

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

The world's tallest Lego tower was built in Oslo, Norway, in 2010. It stood 30.22 meters high.

The world's longest wedding train was 2,750 meters.

The Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona, built a forty-five-foot-long paper airplane. The eight-hundred-pound aircraft actually flew at a speed of ninety-eight miles per hour after being towed aloft by a helicopter.

An ancient species of snake that lived in South America 60 million years ago weighed 2,500 pounds and stretched forty-three feet.

The world's shortest man is one Chandra Bahadur Dangi of Nepal, who stands just twenty-two inches tall. The seventy-two-year-old has five brothers, all of whom are normal size.

CATTLE EXCHANGE

South African president Jacob Zuma has been married six times and, as of 2012, has four wives. He paid the family of his fifth wife ten cattle in exchange for her hand in marriage.

RHODES TO RICHES

Women were not eligible for Rhodes Scholarships until 1977.

The scholarship is named after its benefactor, Cecil Rhodes, a South African–born Englishman who founded the De Beers diamond company.

The country of Rhodesia was named for Rhodes.

NO THANK YOU, SIR

The following men have turned down knighthoods from the British government:

Author Roald Dahl (
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
) turned down his in 1986.

Writer Aldous Huxley (
Brave New World
) turned his down in 1959.

Author C. S. Lewis (
The Chronicles of Narnia
) likewise declined.

Novelist Evelyn Waugh (
Brideshead Revisited
) is reported to have regretted turning down his knighthood.

Alfred Hitchcock said “Cut” to the queen's first offer.

ASTRONOMICAL NUMBER

In 2006, the phone number 666-6666 was auctioned off in Qatar for $3 million.

VALUABLE VINEGAR

The world's most expensive bottle of wine was a 1787 Château Lafite that sold for $160,000 in 1985. The Bordeaux, which is now undrinkable because of its age, once belonged to Thomas Jefferson.

STORMY SEAS

The Bay of Bengal gets the most deadly storms of any region in the world.

IN THE RAW

Nyotaimori
, meaning “female body presentation” in Japanese, is the practice of eating sashimi or sushi off the body of a nude female. A woman who specializes in this form of service must bathe first and douse herself with cold water so as not to warm up the food too quickly. She must also be able to lie perfectly still for hours.

BIG LOVE

The Jurassic Museum of Asturias in Spain features two life-size skeletons of
T. rex
copulating.

YANKEE GO HOME

The following are the countries that U.S. State Department advised Americans not to travel to in 2011: Afghanistan, Algeria, Chad, Colombia, Sudan (Darfur region), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Iraq, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Niger, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Philippines, Somalia, and Yemen.

SOUTH OF THE BORDER

Approximately one in ten Mexicans live and work abroad, sending large sums of money to family members back home. In 2011, Mexican expatriates sent roughly $2 billion a month to banks in Mexico from money earned in the United States.

Mexico has the fourteenth-largest economy in the world, and the average salary there is higher than in Brazil, India, and China.

Mexico's official name is the United Mexican States. The country adopted the name in 1824 to emulate its neighbor to the north.

The Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán made the
Forbes
2012 list of the world's wealthiest people, with an estimated worth of $1 billion.