Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids (9 page)

WHO:
Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe

WHEN:
1601

CAUSE OF DEATH:
Burst bladder

The famed Danish astronomer, who invented an indoor pressure-flow toilet, died in a terrible twist of fate: During dinner one night, having consumed a large amount of alcohol, he politely refused to leave the table to empty his bladder. By the time Brahe made it to the loo, his overfull bladder had burst and killed him.

WHO:
King George II of England

WHEN:
1760

CAUSE OF DEATH:
Aortic dissection

George II ruled for more than 30 years…and then died from a
tear in the lining of the aorta while straining on the toilet. He made medical history as the first person to have “aortic dissection” recorded as the cause of death.

WHO:
Empress Catherine the Great of Russia

WHEN:
1796

CAUSE OF DEATH:
Unknown, but probably natural causes

Catherine the Great, Czaress of Russia, was making her way to the bathroom when something caused her to collapse on the threshold. That's where her attendant found her partially conscious. She died soon after.

WHO:
Elvis Presley

WHEN:
1977

CAUSE OF DEATH:
Drug overdose

The king of rock and roll died as the result of taking too many prescription drugs, including codeine from a dental visit. (He was known to have previously had an allergic reaction to codeine.) While in the bathroom, Presley apparently got sick, fell unconscious, and crashed to the floor. His autopsy stated he died from “cardiac arrhythmia” from ingesting too many drugs.

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ACTUAL BOOK TITLES

•
  
How to Be Happy Though Married
, by E. J. Hardy (1885)

•
  
Life and Laughter 'midst the Cannibals
, by C. W. Collison (1926)

•
  
Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe
, by William Rossi (1977)

•
  
Children Are Wet Cement
, by Ann Ortlund (2002)

•
  
Be Bold with Bananas
, a cookbook by the Australian Banana Growers Council (1970s)

Our Biggest Star

The Sun travels through space at 230 miles per second—fast enough to go from New York to Los Angeles in 11 seconds.

The Sun may look bigger at sunrise and sunset, but it's actually about 8,000 miles closer to you at high noon.

Those “angelic” sunbeams pouring through clouds are technically called “crepuscular rays.”

The pressure at the Sun's center is about 700 million tons per square inch—enough to smash atoms (which it does).

During our winter, Earth is 3 million miles
closer
to the Sun than in summer because of the way Earth tilts on its axis.

What is a
spectroheliokinematograph
? A special camera used to film the Sun.

The Sun contains 99.8 percent of the mass in the solar system. Jupiter has most of the rest.

The Sun shrinks by five feet every hour.

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YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME?

Nineteenth-century poet and literary sex symbol Lord Byron got lots of requests for bits of his hair. He sent clippings from Boatswain, his Newfoundland dog.

Physical Fatness

As far as your body is concerned, fat is a fuel tank, storing energy to burn when you need it.

The human body contains about 30 billion fat cells.

Sumo wrestlers have to be at least 5'6" tall and weigh 165 pounds. Most champions are much heavier than that.

The body mass index measures how much fat you have on your body: Below 18.5 is “underweight.” 18.5 to 24.9 “normal.” 25 to 29.9, “overweight.” 30 to 39.9, “obese.” And over 40, “morbidly obese.”

63 percent of Americans are overweight, obese, or severely obese.

For most of human history, obesity was a status symbol, signifying health, wealth, and fertility.

Not getting enough sleep can be one cause of obesity.

Minnesota and Utah have the lowest rates of childhood obesity (23.1 percent). Mississippi has the highest (44.4 percent).

Dads are less likely than moms to recognize that their child is overweight.

Let yourself go: 70.6 percent of married American men are overweight or obese. Married women: 48.6 percent

Studies show that most lottery winners gain weight after they win.

Thinking for one hour burns about 0.07 grams of fat.

For the average person, walking an extra 20 minutes every day burns 7 pounds of body fat per year. (It's more if you're overweight or obese.)

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Turkeys can have stress-induced heart attacks.

It's a Living

A
qwylwryghte
is an ancient name for an old job: wagon-wheel mechanic.

A
muggler
takes care of pigs.

A
frobbisher
polishes metal for a living.

In the U.S. Army, “laundry and shower specialist” is an official job title, but it isn't much fun. Duties include spraying germicide on laundry.

“Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Not over 18. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.” Despite that ominous ad, 183 boys and men, age 11 to 40, became Pony Express riders. (Luckily, only one rider was killed in the 19 months the Pony Express existed.)

New Hampshire has an official state seagull harasser whose job it is to drive gulls away from nesting terns.

A
belly builder
is someone who puts together the parts inside a piano.

Gong farmer
is an old British name for a person who cleans out privies and cesspools.

Coffee Break

A single coffee tree yields only about 2 to 4 pounds of roasted coffee annually.

It takes 18 coffee trees to feed the habit of a two-cup-a-day coffee drinker for one year.

Only about a penny of that latte you buy for four bucks goes back to the farmer who grew the coffee.

The coffee “bean” is not really a bean. It's the pit of the coffee “cherry,” which is really a berry. Drying the discarded fruit makes a pleasant, fruity, and very caffeinated tea.

Math students, remember this request: “May I have a large container of coffee? Thank you.” If you count the letters of each word, you'll get pi to ten digits: 3.141592653.

Americans consume coffee at the rate of 4,848 cups a second.

Rhode Island's official state drink is “coffee milk,” a delicacy that's one part coffee to one part milk, and heavy on the sugar.

Hawaii is the only state that grows coffee.

The caffeine that's removed from decaf coffee is mostly used in soft drinks, aspirin, and over-the-counter stimulants.

Ten grams of caffeine can kill the average person. That's the equivalent of about 100 cups of coffee drunk in four hours.

Clownin' Around

How dangerous are circus jobs? Not that dangerous. In fact, spectators driving to and from the circus grounds suffer more injuries and death than performers do in their acts.

In circus jargon, a
doniker
is a toilet.

Calliopes—those whistling musical instruments housed in a wagon or train car—traditionally appeared only at the end of circus parades. That was partly to give a bang-up finish to the parade, but mostly because sometimes their steam boilers exploded.

Circus clowns have a hierarchy: The highest is called the
clown blanc
(“whiteface” in French), whose face is completely painted like Bozo or Ronald McDonald. The second tier is the Auguste, a fall-guy clown in flesh tones. At the bottom is the Character—tramps, cops, and clown-car fillers to act as foils and extras.

How many animals come in a box of classic Nabisco's Animal Crackers? Typically 22 cookies, in a random mix of 19 possible animal shapes.

Traveling shows with clowns and performers weren't called “circuses” until the 1790s.

There's no evidence that famous circus-master P. T. Barnum ever said, “There's a sucker born every minute.”

There were seven Ringling brothers: Al, Gus, Otto, Alf, Charles, John, and Henry. They also had a sister named Ida.

A “flea circus” was a show that really
did
star performing fleas. Although flea circuses began in England during the 1500s, the tiny performances didn't become a big thing until the 1800s. The shows were short—usually 3 to 8 minutes—and could be attended by only a few people at a time. (After all, it's not like fleas can do that many tricks, and they were hard to see from a distance.)

China had the first school for circus arts, opened between the 7th and 10th centuries. The curriculum included sword dancing, rope walking, and pole tricks.

Gridiron Trivia

All NFL game balls are made by hand in Ada, Ohio.

Instant replay, invented by Tony Verna, was first used during a 1963 Army vs. Navy football game.

The worst shutout in football history took place in 1916, when Georgia Tech clobbered Cumberland University 222–0.

Most dangerous sport: Football. (#2: Basketball.)

U.S. sport with the most viewers: NFL football. (#2: NASCAR.)

Elvis Presley always wore a helmet when watching football on TV.

After years of adjusting the specific game rules and regulations, what's now considered the very first intercollegiate football game took place between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869.

Wearing a football helmets was optional in the NFL until 1943.

In 1873 Cornell's football team asked permission to travel to Cleveland for a game against the University of Michigan. “Absolutely not,” roared the university's president, Andrew White. “I will not permit thirty men to travel 400 miles merely to agitate a bag of wind [to play football].”

Feats of Clay

A
pugger
is a person who mixes clay for ceramics.

Slings have been used as weapons since ancient times. In a pinch, throwers used rocks as ammo, but if they wanted accuracy, they used hardened clay balls instead.

Kaolin is a white clay best known for being used to make fine china. But it's also used to make paper glossy, keep pills together, protect crops from pests, and in diarrhea medicines (like Kaopectate) to make stools solid.

Clay was once baked into electrical fixtures for insulation.

Long before the first books, early Egyptian libraries lent out literature that had been pressed onto clay tablets.

Clay is part of most houses too, whether as brick, stucco, tiles, or “wattle and daub” (a building technique that trowels clay onto a wooden frame).

The oldest surviving love poem was etched onto a clay tablet in about 3500 BC.

Armadillos eat a lot of dirt with their diet of insects and snails, so their excrement comes out looking like round clay marbles.

In 1948 Edward Lowe of Cassopolis, Michigan, discovered that little bits of dried clay were perfect for cat boxes. He used that knowledge to found Tidy Cat.

The Mayans used cacao beans as currency, and painted clay counterfeit beans were common.

Doctors once prescribed eating a little clay for upset stomachs, and even today, you can still buy certain “medicinal” clays from alternative-medicine Web sites. Many users swear it works.

There's clay in the sidewalk. It's mixed with limestone and gypsum to make concrete.

Games People Play

It takes 17 hits to sink all of an opponent's ships in a game of Battleship.

When Fidel Castro took control of Cuba, he ordered all Monopoly game boards destroyed.

Nintendo's Mario character has appeared in more than 200 video games since 1981.

Video-game creators pay the NFL about $300 million to use real players in their games.

The board game Risk has released themed editions for Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Godstorm, Narnia, Halo Wars, Metal Gear Solid, Transformers, and Napoleon.

“Flap-dragon” or “snapdragon” was a 16th-century game that included trying to pluck hot raisins from a shallow plate of burning brandy and flip them into your mouth, still burning. (Closing your mouth and biting down hard was usually enough to extinguish them.)

There are 1,326 possible hands you can be dealt in a game of Texas Hold 'Em.

At the game's peak in 2009, Farmville “farmers” outnumbered real farmers in the United States by 60 to 1.

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