Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids (28 page)

Octopuses have no bones, so they can squeeze into very small openings.

The only hard part of an octopus's body is its beak.

There are about 100 octopus species.

Octopuses have three hearts: one pumps blood through the animal's entire body; the other two pump blood into its two gills to better absorb oxygen from the water.

Octopuses swim fast by jet-propelling themselves by squirting water through a funnel-like body part called a
hyponome
.

Octopuses live only one to three years.

They are pretty smart—they have good long-and short-term memory, and excel at mazes and problem-solving.

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DID YOU KNOW?

It wasn't until the 1940s that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state governments (not just the feds) had to guarantee religious freedom. Before that, a number of states specifically prohibited anybody but Protestants from holding office, and Connecticut and Massachusets even had state churches.

The Comic Book Code

In 1954 the U.S. government enacted a “code” for the comic book industry to regulate violence, language, and other issues that might come up in the stories. Comic book creators lived by that “code” for almost half a century. Marvel finally became the first to renounce it in 2001, and in 2011 DC Comics and Archie Comics were the last publishers to use it. Here are some of government's rules:

CRIME AND CRIMINALS

“Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals…If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity…Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous…In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.”

RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY

“Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority…Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable behavior shall be fostered.”

VIOLENCE, GHOULS, AND WEREWOLVES

“All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted…All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated…Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited…Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.”

PROFANITY, SLANG, AND GOOD GRAMMAR

“Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden…Although slang and colloquialisms are acceptable, excessive use should be discouraged and, wherever possible, good grammar shall be employed.”

SEX

“Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable…All characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable to society…Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities…Passion or romantic interest shall never be treated in such a way as to stimulate the lower and baser emotions…Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested…Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.”

THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE

“Divorce shall not be treated humorously nor represented as desirable…Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed…Sexual abnormalities are unacceptable…The treatment of live-romance stories shall emphasize the value of the home and the sanctity of marriage.”

TITLES

“No comic magazine shall use the word(s) ‘horror' or ‘terror' in its title…Restraint in the use of the word ‘crime' in titles or subtitles shall be exercised…The letters of the word ‘crime' on a comics-magazine cover shall never be appreciably greater in dimension than the other words contained in the title. The word ‘crime' shall never appear alone on a cover.”

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Is it an insult or a compliment to be called a “nasute”?
Hard to say. The word can mean that you have a quick intellect, a critical attitude, a good sense of smell…or a big nose.

Change the Channel

The first president to appear on television was Franklin D. Roosevelt. The year was 1939, and the place was the New York World's Fair.

Koko, the first signing gorilla, loved to watch
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
. When she finally met Rogers in person, Koko wrapped her long arms around him and then—as she'd seen him do on TV—she gently removed his shoes.

TVs had a channel 1 until 1948, when that frequency was taken back from the broadcasters and given to radio services.

A study from England's Nottingham Trent University found that watching TV news triggers depression, confusion, irritation, anger, and anxiety.

St. Clare of Assisi (1194–1253) was designated as the patron saint of television based on a reported miracle that once, too ill to attend Mass, she was able to hear and see the service on the wall of her room.

Humans burn one to two calories a minute watching TV, about the same amount as while sleeping.

The 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley were the first to sell exclusive broadcast rights to a TV network. ABC paid $50,000 to broadcast the Olympics coverage.

TV's Emmy Awards aren't named for a person, but for the “Immy,” short for “image orthicon,” the main piece of a 1950s TV camera.

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“If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners.”

—Johnny Carson, on Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television

Baby Animals

Baby dolphins must hold their breath while nursing.

Despite the picturesque clocks, the European cuckoo has a dark side. The cuckoo mother doesn't ever make a nest—she lays one egg at a time into the nests of other species. When the cuckoo baby hatches, it busies itself with shoving the other hatchlings and eggs out, and the unsuspecting mother raises the murderous young cuckoo as her own.

Newborn rabbits are helpless for at least 10 days, but baby hares can hop around within minutes of being born.

Seals sometimes eat baby sharks.

Alligators don't have sex chromosomes. A baby's gender is determined by the temperature around the egg. If it is 86°F or below, the baby probably will be a girl; 93°F and above, a boy. A nest that hovers around 88°F will produce both sexes.

A baby platypus is born with a full set of teeth that fall out after a few weeks. Adults are toothless.

The green tree python isn't green when it's a baby—it's yellow, red, or brown.

Baby mice are called
kittens, pups
, or
pinkies
.

New lobsters emerge from their eggs as microscopic larvae. After floating on the surface of the ocean for two weeks, they settle to the bottom to grow into lobsters as we know them. For every 100,000 baby lobsters, only about four will survive.

Baby alligators bark to signal to their mothers that they're ready to emerge from their eggs.

In 1863 British scientist John Davy pumped air into empty eggshells and placed them underwater. By watching tiny bubbles form on the surface of the eggs, he proved his theory that baby birds can breathe because of thousands of microscopic air holes in their shells.

A baby robin can eat up to 14 feet of earthworms a day.

Monkey babies suck their thumbs, too.

Hairs to You

An
acrocomic
is a person with long hair.

Humans and chimpanzees have the same number of hair follicles.

At one time, Roman law decreed that all prostitutes had to bleach their hair blonde.

1 in 3 U.S. Caucasian women has blonde hair—but 1 in 20 is natural.

Hair on your scalp will grow approximately half an inch per month.

The average person grows 6.5 feet of nose hair in a lifetime.

The scientific name for hairs standing on end because of fright:
piloerection
.

In India, hairy ears are a measure of a man's virility.

A Yale study found that having a “bad-hair day” really does negatively affect many people's moods.

At any given time, 15 percent of a person's hair follicles are resting.

There are about 550 hairs in one of your eyebrows.

Lice can change their body color to match a person's hair.

On average, an adult human has about five million body hairs.

Get Along, Little Dogies

Wagon trains heading west averaged only about 1 to 2 mph.

Almost half of all cowboys in the 1800s were white; a quarter, Mexican; and a quarter, black.

Usual pay for a cowboy in the Old West was food, a bed in the bunkhouse, and a dollar a day.

In 1882 a Texas cattle association banned cowboys from carrying six-shooters. The
Texas Live Stock Journal
explained the ban in 1884: “The six-shooter loaded with deadly cartridges is a dangerous companion for any man, especially if he should unfortunately be primed with whiskey. Cattlemen should unite in aiding the enforcement of the law against carrying of deadly weapons.”

Former Wild West gunfighter Bat Masterson became a sports writer for the
New York Morning Telegraph
. After two decades of word-slingin', he died in 1921 with his boots on…in front of his typewriter at work.

The average cowboy in the Old West was 24 years old; his career lasted about seven years.

Stetson cowboy hats were created way back in 1865…and way back East in Pennsylvania.

The first rodeo took place on July 4, 1888 in Prescott, Arizona.

Used for Texas-to-Denver cattle drives, the Goodnight–Loving Trail got its name from cattlemen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, who were pioneers in using long-distance cattle drives as a way to get their livestock to the market.

A herd of cattle in the Old West traveled about 15 miles a day. A trail drive from Texas to a railroad town in another state could cover a thousand miles and take a whole summer.

Why did cowboy boots have such high heels? To better hold the stirrup, and to put some extra distance above the mud, muck, and poop from horses and cattle.

Can You Hear Me Now?

The word “noise” comes from the Latin word
nausea
, as does “nauseous.”

About 28 million Americans have at least some hearing loss. Excess noise is the cause in a third of the cases.

The denser a material, the faster a noise will move through it. For example, noises travel 15 times faster through steel than through air.

Underwater ocean noise has increased by 300 percent since 1969. That can confuse ocean animals like dolphins and whales that depend on sound over long distances to navigate and locate each other.

Loud noises can scare away evil spirits, too. At least, that's the premise behind the tradition of setting off large numbers of firecrackers at Chinese celebrations of all sorts, from New Year's to weddings to funerals.

Noise can disrupt normal behavior in the smallest creatures. For example, when exposed to persistent traffic noise, zebra finches are more likely to cheat on their mates.

“White noise” is the sound of static that is pretty much equal at all sonic frequencies. But there are also other “colors” of noise—pink, blue, brown, green, etc.—that audio engineers generate with some frequencies more accentuated than others.

Besides hearing loss, high noise levels can contribute to stress and cardiovascular disease. Studies show that even moderately high levels of noise during an eight-hour workday raises blood pressure.

Loud noises can cause parakeets to lose feathers.

An African cicada can produce 106.7-decibel noise—as loud as a chainsaw.

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Odds of a golfer hitting a hole in one: 1 in 40,000.

Running on Empty

In the first few modern Olympics, a marathon's length was 24.85 miles (or 40 kilometers), the distance from the Marathon Bridge to historic Athens. After 1896, the distance varied. Then, at the London Olympics in 1908, organizers wanted the race to start at Windsor Castle and run to the White City Stadium—that was an even 26 miles. Then, kowtowing to the royal family, organizers extended the course another 385 yards into the stadium and around most of the track so that it finished right in front of the royal box. In an effort to standardize the distance for future marathons, the Olympic Committee adopted that distance permanently.