Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids (2 page)
Read Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers' Institute
The Building with the Most Stories
Really Dead, or Just Mostly Dead?
Walk Like an (Ancient) Egyptian
Just One Word, Sonâ¦Plastics!
The World's Longest⦠(Animal Style)
He Knows If You've Been Bad or Good
Nine Facts About Eight Planets
The International Space Station
Greetings, Fellow Fact-hounds!
W
elcome one and all to our third big book of short facts. If I do say so myself, it's our best collection yet.
When it comes to bite-sized bits of information, we at the BRI hold ourselves to a very high standard. A fact can't just be factualâit has to be so interesting and surprising that you feel compelled to share it with others. (Or if you're me, attack them with it.) For example:
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Female fruit flies lay eggs in rotting fruitâ¦as many as 500 eggs a day for up to 10 days.
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The number of grains of sand on all of the world's beaches is about 7.5 quintillion.
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The first person to add sugar to gum was a dentist: William Finley Semple, in 1869.
See what I mean? You'll find thousands of fascinating facts like that about all kinds of things, from fitness and fatness to fish, flags, First Ladies, and food phobiasâeven subjects that don't start with F. We've got you covered from aardvarks to zombiesâ¦and everything in between.
But before you attack these pages, I'd like to throw a huge shout-out to the freaky folks who made this masterpiece possible: Jack, Lidija, Sara, Madaline, and Karin. Each and every one of you rocks! And that's a fact. So without further adoâ¦charge!
And as alwaysâ¦
Go with the flow!
âUncle John and the BRI Staff
â¦street-legal, mass-produced car:
The 2011 Bugatti Veyron, made by Volkswagen, can go 267 mph. (It's also the most expensive, selling for $1.7 million.)
⦓furniture”:
In 2007 a motorized sofa drove at 92 mph, setting a world record.
â¦known insect:
The Australian dragonfly, which (depending on what expert you believe) can reach a top speed of 35â60 mph.
â¦bird:
Eider ducks can fly at 47 mph.
â¦land animal:
Cheetahs, 71 mph.
â¦reptile:
Sea turtles can swim as fast as 35 mph.
â¦checkmate:
The “Fool's Mate” in chess takes just two moves. It gets its name from the fact that the first player must play very badly (or foolishly) on his first two moves for the second player to achieve the checkmate.
â¦winds ever measured:
318 mph during a 1999 Oklahoma tornado.
â¦elevator:
It was installed in China's 2,000-foot-tall Shanghai Tower in 2014. It climbs at about 59 feet per second, or 40 mph.
â¦roller coaster:
Formula Rossa at Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi (149 mph).
Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Americans consume seven billion hot dogs.
The most popular condiment is mustard. Then come onions, chili, ketchup, relish, and sauerkraut.
Nathan Handwerker opened Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs (which remains a Coney Island institution) in 1916. To counteract the stories of unhealthy ingredients in hot dogs, Handwerker hired men to wear surgeons' smocks and eat lunch in his restaurants.
The largest seller of hot dogs is 7-Eleven, with 100 million served annually.
If you ask for a “hot dog” in New Zealand, you'll get it battered on a stick like a corn dog. To get one on a bun, you have to ask for an “American hot dog.”
A “Chicago-style” hot dog never includes ketchup.
Hot dogs cause about 17 percent of all food asphyxiation deaths in children under 10.
According to Guinness, the most expensive hot dogs ever were ¾-pound, 18-inch dogs sold for charity in 2012 at a Sacramento, California, restaurant. Topped with an impressive array of fancy condimentsâmoose milk cheese, maple-syrup bacon, organic baby greens, whole-grain mustard, and cranberriesâthe dogs cost $145.49 each, with proceeds donated to a children's hospital.
