Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (16 page)

Q: WHY DOES HAIR TURN GRAY?

A:
Gray (or white) is the base color of hair. Pigment cells located at the base of each hair follicle produce the natural dominant color of our youth. However, as a person grows older, more and more of these pigment cells die and color is lost from individual hairs. The result is that a person’s hair gradually begins to show more and more gray. The whole process may take between 10 and 20 years—rarely does a person’s entire collection of individual hairs (which can number in the hundreds of thousands) go gray overnight. (
How Things Work
, by Louis Bloomfield)

Male hospital patients fall out of bed twice as often as female patients.

One out of every 14 women in the United States is a natural blonde. Only one out of every 16 men are.

Men get more ulcers. Women get more migraine headaches.

The average woman shaves 412 square inches of skin on her body. The average man: 48.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

On average, females hear better than males at every age.

Forty-four percent of Americans think God is a man. One percent think God is a woman.

Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

When a waitress draws a happy face on a check, tips go up 18 percent. When a waiter does, tips only increase 3 percent.

American women over age 55 watch more TV than anyone else. Men between the ages of 18 and 24 watch the least.

About two thirds of all men’s clothing bought in the United States is purchased by women.

On average, men are 40 percent muscle and 15 percent fat. Women are 23 percent muscle and 25 percent fat.

The average American woman thinks about politics 12 minutes a day. Average man: six minutes.

Thirteen percent of American men say they call their mothers every day. Thirty-two percent of women call their mothers daily.

In 1992, 5,840 people checked into U.S. emergency rooms with “pillow-related injuries.”

Number one health complaint Americans report to their doctors: insomnia.

Choking on food is the seventh leading cause of death in America.

Ninety percent of Americans aren’t aware that being overweight increases the risk of strokes.

The medical condition epistaxisis: nosebleed.

Most destructive disease in human history: malaria.

Most common physical complaint in the United States: lower back pain.

Sixty-five percent of American adolescents get acne.

Ninety-five percent of food-poisoning cases are never reported.

Surgeons who listen to music during operations perform better than those who don’t.

Crocodile-tear syndrome is a nerve disorder that makes people cry when they eat.

Three surgeries most commonly performed in the United States: biopsies, cesarean sections, and hysterectomies.

Forty percent of nurses say they wouldn’t want their family treated in hospitals where they work.

In 1962 Johanne Relleke of Rhodesia was stung by bees 2,443 times. He survived.

The common flu kills 20,000 people a year.

After a three-week vacation, your IQ can drop by as much as 20 percent.

One in four Americans isn’t sure if the earth travels around the sun or vice versa.

Forty percent of Americans say the theory of evolution is “probably not true.”

According to a 1997 poll, about two thirds of Americans believe a UFO may have crashed at Roswell.

Each year Americans use enough foam peanuts to fill ten 85-story skyscrapers.

If you’re average, you’ll change your residence 11 times in your life, or once about every six years.

Fifty-two percent of Americans say they’d “rather spend a week in jail” than be president.

Seventy-two percent of Americans believe in heaven. Twelve percent don’t.

Average age of a new grandparent in the United States: 47.

Average annual income in the United Sates at the beginning of World War II: $1,070. In 2005: $32,500.

When a male camel spits at something, it aims for the eyes.

One-hump camels run faster than two-humped camels.

A camel can drink 25 gallons of water in half an hour.

A camel with one hump is a dromedary.

If it has two humps, it’s a Bactrian camel.

During 33 seasons on the air, Mister Rogers’s trolley traveled more than 100 miles on its track.

Ratio of people to televisions in the world: six to one.

In 1948, 2.3 percent of American households had a television. Today 99 percent do.

Forty-six percent of all violence on television occurs in cartoons.

Thirty-five percent of people watching TV yell at it.

The first TV weather chart was broadcast in Britain on November 11, 1936.

The last cigarette ad on TV appeared on
The Tonight Show
, December 31, 1970.

England was the first country with regular TV service, in 1936. The United States was second, in 1939.

Fifty-three percent of high school grads and 27 percent of college grads “get most of their information from TV.”

Sitcom characters rarely say goodbye when they hang up the phone.

More people watch primetime television on Thursday night than on any other night.

More than half of Americans say they regularly watch TV while eating dinner.

The average American spends 1,600 hours a year watching TV, and 323 hours reading.

BALLPOINT PEN:
Invented by a Hungarian who manufactured them in a factory in England, which was eventually taken over by a French company called Bic.

BAND-AID:
Invented by the husband of an accident-prone woman who was constantly cutting and burning herself in the kitchen.

CELLOPHANE:
Move over, waxed paper. The inventor was trying to make a stainproof tablecloth and came up with the first clear food wrap instead.

ELECTRIC BLANKET:
Not based, as you might think, on the electric heating pad, but on the electrically heated flying suits that U.S. Air Force pilots wore during World War II.

JOCKEY SHORTS:
A midwestern underwear manufacturer copied the design of men’s bathing suits that were popular in France at the time (the 1930s).

MATCH:
The first match was a stick that the inventor (who was trying to invent a new kind of explosive) had used to stir his ingredients. When he tried to remove the dried glob on the end of the stick, it ignited.

MINIATURE GOLF:
Invented by an unusual man who loved his family as much as he loved playing golf. This way he could get his golfing fix and be with the wife and kiddies, too.

PAPER CUP:
Because the inventor had in mind a disposable water cup that wouldn’t carry germs, he called his invention health cups. Luckily, his office happened to be in the same building as the Dixie Doll Company—voilà!—Dixie Cups.

PAPER TOWEL:
When a defective roll of toilet paper—too heavy and very wrinkled—arrived at the Scott company’s mill, somebody had the bright idea to sell it as paper towels.

PEANUT BUTTER:
Ground peanuts and peanut oil, it was the brainchild of a doctor whose patient was dying of “protein malnutrition” and, because of a stomach disorder, couldn’t eat meat. Peanut butter never made it as a medicinal remedy, but it did catch on as an easy way to get kids to eat protein.

REARVIEW MIRROR:
The first was introduced at the Indy 500 in 1911. Up till then there were two people in each car: the driver and the mechanic, who also acted as lookout. That year, the inventor drove his rearview-mirrored car across the finish line to finish first.

RUNNING SHOES:
A miler at the University of Oregon heated some rubber in a waffle iron to get the kind of traction he wanted on the soles of his running shoes. He started a shoe business and named the shoes Nike, after the Greek goddess of victory.

SHOPPING CART:
The idea didn’t catch on right away since shoppers were used to carrying their own baskets around a store. The inventor (who was also the market owner) decided to hire some phonies to push the carts around and pretend they were shopping. That did the trick.

VENDING MACHINE:
Would you believe that vending machines have been around since the 17th century? The first one, in England, dispensed one pipeful of tobacco for a penny.

WIRE COAT HANGER:
When a worker at the Timberlake Wire and Novelty Company arrived at work and found all the coat hooks taken, he twisted some wire into what looked pretty much like the ones we use now, and proceeded to hang up his coat.

YO-YO:
The word
yo-yo
means “come-come” in Tagalog. It was used as a hunting weapon in the Philippines.

It takes 8.3 minutes for the sun’s light—traveling at 186,282 miles a second—to reach Earth. (At that speed, light can travel around Earth seven times in a second.)

The sun looks yellow-gold because we’re viewing it through Earth’s atmosphere. Judging from its surface temperature, the sun’s color is probably closer to white.

The sun rotates once every 26.8 days.

The temperature of the sun at its core is around 73 million degrees. It takes 50 years for this energy to reach the sun’s surface, where we can see it as light.

The sun contains 99.85 percent of the matter in the solar system.

The English astronomer James Jeans once figured that if you placed a piece of the sun’s core the size of the head of a pin on Earth, its heat would kill a person 94 miles away.

The sun produces more energy in one second than human beings have produced in all of our history. In less than a week, the sun sends out more energy than we could make by burning all the natural gas, oil, coal, and wood on Earth.

Earth receives 2 one-billionths of the sun’s power.

The amount of power that falls on each square foot of Earth’s surface per minute is about 126 watts, enough to light two standard 60-watt lightbulbs.

The surface gravity on the sun is 28 times that of Earth. If you weigh 120 pounds on Earth, on the sun you would weigh 3,360 pounds.

Men are more likely than women to run stoplights. Women are more likely to switch lanes without signaling.

Fifty-one percent of American men say TV remote controls have “significantly” increased their quality of life. Thirty-nine percent of women agree.

Men leave their hotel rooms cleaner than women do.

Men get hiccups more often than women. No one knows why.

There are only two places in the world where men outlive women: southern Asia and Iran.

If you’re an average American man, you’ll spend 81 minutes in your car today. Average woman: 64.

On average, a woman’s heart beats faster than a man’s.

Men laugh longer, more loudly, and more often (69 times per day to 55 times for a woman) than women do.

Marriage makes a woman more likely to become depressed. A man: less likely.

Twenty-five percent of men wait until “a few weeks” before Christmas to do their holiday shopping. Fifteen percent of women start Christmas shopping in July.

Thirty-two percent of women, and 8 percent of men, say they’re better at doing the laundry than their spouse is.

When snow skiing, most men fall on their faces. Most women fall on their behinds.

William Henry Harrison’s inaugural address was the longest, at 8,443 words.