Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids (3 page)

The most hot dogs (with buns) consumed by one person in 10 minutes: 68. Joey Chestnut holds the record—he established it at an annual contest in Coney Island in 2009 and tied it in 2012.

The world's longest hot dog stretched 196.85 feet and was prepared by Japan's Shizuoka Meat Producers in 2006.

In the 1880s or '90s, frankfurters (from Germany) and wieners (from Austria) became known as “hot dogs”—possibly because of the sausages' similarities to dachshunds or maybe because of rumors about where the meat came from. (Germans regularly ate dog meat back then.)

There's a Word for It

If you're not
quite
an atheist, you may be a
minimifidianist
, defined as “someone who has
almost
no faith or belief.”

If you say it out loud, you can almost guess the definition of
abecedarian
: “Somebody who is learning the fundamentals of something, like the alphabet.”

Do some politicians suffer from
empleomania
? It means “an unnaturally high enthusiasm for holding public office.”

Mamihlapinatapai
is “a look between two people who both want something to happen, but with neither wanting to make the first move.”

What's a
scroggling
? A small, runty apple left on the tree after a harvest.

A dictionary of Old English defines a
spatherdab
as “a scandal-monger who goes from house to house dispensing news.”

Another from Old English: A
pilgarlick
is a “poor, ill-dressed person; an object of pity or contempt.”

And one more: A
snoker
is “one who smells at objects like a dog.”

Left-Handers

About 10 percent of the world's population is left-handed.

16 percent of American presidents have been, including five of the last seven (Ford, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama).

The 2008 election was the first in which both candidates were left-handed.

Kermit the Frog is also left-handed.

The word “sinister” began as a slur on left-handers—it's from the Latin
sinestre
, which meant both “left-handed” and “wicked.” So was
gauche
, French for both “left” and “social awkwardness”—it's from an old word,
gauchir
, that means “to become warped.”

Premature infants are more likely to be left-handed than full-term babies.

22 percent of all twins are left-handed.

On average, left-handed women enter menopause sooner than right-handed women.

Left-handed people tend to scratch with their right hand.

More male cats are left-pawed than female cats.

Pennsylvania's Juniata College offers a scholarship for left-handed students.

Three sports officially forbid players from playing left-handed: jai alai, field hockey, and polo.

In hand-to-hand combat, left-handers are more likely to prevail because most fighters haven't had much practice handling punches, thrusts, and jabs from the left.

Ultrasounds during pregnancy increase the chances of having a left-handed baby.

When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, he took his first step with his left foot.

Loose Change

The first known coins, minted in about 2000 BC, were bronze pieces shaped like cattle.

In 1124 England's King Henry I ordered 94 workers castrated for producing bad coins.

In 1783 Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and David Rittenhouse proposed the currency system that we use today. One difference from now: when their proposal passed Congress, the 10-cent coin was spelled
disme
, a French term that meant “1/10th.”

The words “In God We Trust” first appeared on pennies, half-pennies, and nickels during the Civil War, to drive home the idea that God was on the Union's side. It disappeared from the nickel in 1883 and didn't reappear until 1938.

Then, “In God We Trust” was added to U.S. paper currency during the Cold War in 1957 as a way of differentiating the (largely Christian) United States from the (officially atheistic) Soviet Union.

Only 25 percent of a nickel is actually made of nickel. The rest is cupro—an alloy of 75 percent copper, 25 percent nickel, and a pinch of manganese. A penny is only 2.5 percent copper and 97.5 percent zinc. Dimes, quarters, and half-dollars are all 8.33 percent nickel and the rest cupro.

Can't find the second Abe Lincoln on a pre-2009 penny? Look very carefully at the back of one with the memorial on it.

In 1737 Samuel Higley of Connecticut minted America's first copper coins. Value: 3 pence.

When George Washington was shown a half-dollar design with his image on it, he denounced it as a trapping of monarchy that was inappropriate for a democracy. Instead, he suggested Lady Liberty. She graced American coins until 1909, when Abraham Lincoln's image replaced her on the penny. This started a trend of using former presidents, and in 1932—despite his wishes—Washington's image was put on the quarter.

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

John and Abigail Adams were the first First Couple to live in the White House. When they moved there in 1800, Washington, D.C., was largely covered in swamps. President Adams once got lost in the woods while trying to find his way back to the White House.

Presidents William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor both died in the White House. (Harrison caught pneumonia and died after just a month in office; Taylor died of a stomach ailment, possibly cholera.)

Andrew Jackson's first official act as president: ordering spittoons for the White House.

Abraham Lincoln was a fan of actor (and assassin) John Wilkes Booth and once even invited him to the White House. Booth declined.

First Lady Louisa Adams (wife of John Quincy) bred silkworms in the White House. She even made silk cloth from them.

There are 132 rooms in the White House…35 of them are bathrooms.

President James Monroe once chased his Secretary of the Treasury from the White House with fire tongs.

Jimmy Carter watched the most movies in office. He had 480 films projected during his four-year term. The first was
All the President's Men
, about the downfall of Richard Nixon.

Thomas Jefferson's daughter, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph, was the first woman to give birth in the White House. Frances Cleveland, wife of Grover, was the only First Lady to do so.

In 1860, when the Prince of Wales visited the White House, President James Buchanan gave up his bedroom and slept on a sofa in the hallway.

The first White House phone number was simply…1.

Before They Were Famous

Mary Tyler Moore's first acting job was in 1955. At the age of 17, she played a pixie named Happy Hotpoint in early TV dishwasher commercials.

Mike Wallace's (
60 Minutes
) first TV job was as a product pitchman on the 1949 kids' show
Super Circus
.

Charles Dickens grew up poor and, at the age of 12, was forced to take a job pasting labels on bottles at a shoe-polish factory.

Writer Virginia Woolf briefly worked as a teacher, but she quit.

Before cartoonist Gary Larson started drawing
The Far Side
, he had jobs as a jazz guitarist and animal cruelty investigator for the Seattle Humane Society.

Poet Walt Whitman worked as a low-level Washington bureaucrat during the Civil War.

Evel Knievel was once fired from a mining job for making a dirt-moving machine do a wheelie.

What do O. Henry, Henrik Ibsen, and Dante Alighieri have in common? They were all once pharmacists.

When Wyatt Earp's pal Doc Holliday wasn't drilling people with his gun, he was drilling them in other ways. In his day job, he was a dentist.

Another dentist, Dr. Pearl Grey, eventually changed his first name to Zane and became a very successful writer of Old West fiction.

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HAIR THIS!

Natural blonds have more individual hairs on their heads (about 140,000) than brunettes, who have about 105,000. Redheads? Only around 90,000.

Rhino Facts

Rhinos got their name because, in Greek,
rhinos
meant “nose” and
keras
meant “horn.”

Rhino horns are made of keratin, the same stuff that's in hair and fingernails.

What do you call more than one rhinoceros? Some linguists in the late 1800s suggested “rhinocerotes,” but were universally ignored. So even though it sounds awkward and is hard to say, it looks like we're stuck with “rhinoceroses.” (Or, of course, “rhinos.”)

A group of rhinos is called a “crash.”

The two main types of rhinos—black rhinos and white rhinos—are different colors, but are closely related and were the same species five million years ago. The main difference in their appearance is the shape of their mouths, which evolved to suit local vegetation. White rhinos eat mostly grass and have wide, flat lips for grazing; black rhinos eat leaves and have longer, more pointed lips for grazing.

Besides the black and white rhinos, there are also the Sumatran and Javan, both considered “critically endangered,” and the Indian, considered “vulnerable.” Reports indicate that there may be just 275 Sumatran rhinos in the wild, and only 35 Javan.

The extinct E
lasmotherium
was an Ice Age rhinoceros that could be about 26 feet long.

Lightning Strike

The U.S. city with the most lightning displays is Tampa, Florida—it has about 100 “thunderstorm days” each year.

Oak trees grow to great heights, have deep roots, and retain more water than most. But because water and height are good conductors of electricity, oak trees are also more likely to be struck by lightning than shorter trees.

1 in 8 of all lightning fatalities in America take place on a golf course.

There's enough electricity in a single lightning bolt to power 10,000 electric chairs.

In 2001 singed duck carcasses rained on Hot Springs, Arkansas, after a flock flying by was struck by lightning.

Only about one in five lightning bolts strikes the earth. The rest just jump from one cloud to another.

A lightning bolt can be more than 10 miles long, but most are only about an inch in diameter. They look thicker because they light up the foggy air around them.

Every year, about 24,000 people are killed by lightning strikes worldwide, and 240,000 are injured.

A Trip to the Islands

Thousand island salad dressing got its name from its birthplace—the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence River along the border of the U.S. and Canada.

The world's shortest regularly scheduled airline flight takes place between the Scottish islands of Westray and Papa Westray, a distance of 1.5 miles. The flight takes 2 minutes, including taxiing.

In the early 1900s, immigrants at Ellis Island were welcomed to America with a serving of Jell-O.

Victoria Island in Canada's far north is the world's eighth-largest island. On Victoria is Tahiryuak Lake. In that lake, there's an unnamed mile-long island. On that island there's an unnamed lake, about 200 by 300 yards. And in
that
lake, there's yet another island that measures 20 by 30 yards. Whew.

According to host Jeff Probst,
Survivor'
s worst location was the Marquesas Islands. The reason? Biting sandflies.

The first American cattle ranch opened on Long Island in 1747.

Today, Coney Island is a peninsula, but it was an island before it was connected to the mainland with landfill. Before the Europeans, the native Lenape tribe called it Narrioch (“land without shadows”). The Dutch called it Conyne Eylandt and the British translated that into Coney Island; both meant “rabbit island.”

Another island that isn't: Rhode Island. In 1524 explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano thought that a small island off of the New England coast looked like the island of Rhodes in Greece. The name “Rhode Island” stuck and people began referring to the mainland region that way as well.

Tiny canned herrings are called “sardines” because there were so many in the waters off the Italian island of Sardinia.

The 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée killed 29,000 people on the Caribbean island of Martinique. Only two people survived.

HAM, I Am

DOTS & DASHES

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HAM Radio was a network of amateur shortwave broadcasters who, from 1912 to the present day, have numbered in the millions. Before Facebook or Twitter, it was a social network that connected people all over the world.

•
    
Why were they called “HAMs”? Before there was radio there were telegraphs. In the 19th century, the term “ham” meant “unskilled,” and telegraph operators applied the ham label to any of their peers whose Morse code skills were slow, sloppy, or inaccurate—all reasons that caused frustration for the operators on the other end who were trying to decode the messages. Early radio operators adopted the insult for their peers and then for any amateur who broadcast his own signal. The amateurs, however, took the insult on as a badge of honor.