Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (19 page)

Eggshells are proportionately as strong as bone.

It’s impossible to lick your elbow. Try it.

If Antarctica were to melt, the sea level would rise over 200 feet.

Aristotle first posed the idea that there was a continent at the South Pole.

Antarctica is the only continent without reptiles.

Antarctica doesn’t have a permanent population. In summer about 4,000 people live there; in winter, around 1,000.

In Antarctica, sunsets can be green.

Antarctica is the only continent that has never seen a war.

The temperature in Antarctica once dropped 65 degrees in 12 minutes.

Antarctica is actually a desert, with about the same precipitation (less than two inches a year), as the Sahara.

Coldest place on earth: Vostok, Antarctica. Average annual temperature: –72°F.

The first sighting of Antarctica was in 1820; the first verified landing was in 1821 by a Russian expedition.

Only 2 percent of Antarctica is ice free.

It’s been as cold as –128.5°F, the lowest temperature ever recorded in the world.

Emilio Marcos Palma was the first person born in Antarctica on January 7, 1978. He’s the only person in history known to be the firstborn on a continent.

The Antarctic Treaty, signed in 1959, prohibits anything of a military nature in Antarctica.

Dogs are banned from Antarctica to protect the seal population.

A pumping human heart can squirt blood as far as 30 feet.

You can lose up to a third of your blood and still survive.

The jugular vein is an artery, not a vein.

The human body has about 60,000 miles of blood vessels.

In the time it takes to turn a page, you’ll lose 3 million blood cells and make 3 million more.

Red blood cells live four months. In that time they make 75,000 trips to the lungs and back.

The most nutritious “food” in the world is blood.

The Rh-ve factor in blood occurs much more frequently (40–45 percent) in Europeans and people of largely European ancestry.

Blood is thicker than water: blood has a specific gravity of 1.06, water’s is 1.00.

Identical twins always have the same blood type.

The average number of industrial compounds and pollutants found in an American’s blood and urine: 91.

The blood in movies is inserted into a “squib,” a blood pack taped to a small explosive charge that’s triggered remotely at the appropriate time. The charge blows the blood pack contents through a hole in the costume.

The
Hummingbird
is the only bird that can fly backward. It achieves this feat by beating its wings up and down at great speed. (Some species have a wing speed of 80 beats per second.)

The home of the
Great Indian Hornbill
is a prison. When the female is ready to lay her eggs, she hides in a hole in a tree. The male then seals up the hole, leaving just a narrow slit through which he passes food. The female stays in there until the chicks are a few months old, then she breaks out and helps the male with feeding duties.

The eyes of the
Woodcock
are set so far back in its head that it has a 360-degree field of vision, enabling it to see all round and even over the top of its head.

The
Quetzal
, of Central America, has such a long tail (up to three feet) that it can’t take off from a branch in the normal way without ripping its tail to shreds. Instead, it launches itself backward into space like a parachutist leaving an aircraft.

The
Wandering Albatross
has the largest wingspan of any bird and can glide for six days without beating its wings. It can also sleep in midair.

The
Male Bowerbird
of Australia attracts a female by building an elaborate love bower. After building a little hut out of twigs, he decorates it with flowers and colorful objects such as feathers, fruit, shells, and pebbles, even glass and paper if the nest is near civilization. One particular species (the atlas bowerbird) actually paints the walls by dipping bark or leaves into the blue or dark green saliva he secretes. The entire bower-building procedure can take months, and the bird will often change the decorations until he is happy with them. When finally satisfied, he performs a love dance outside the bower, sometimes offering the female a pretty item from his collection.

Zappa’s Law:
There are two things on Earth that are universal: hydrogen and stupidity.

Baruch’s Observation:
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Lowe’s Law:
Success always occurs in private, and failure in full public view.

Todd’s Law:
All things being equal, you lose.

Thompson’s Theorem:
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

The Unspeakable Law:
As soon as you mention something . . . if it’s good, it goes away. If it’s bad, it happens.

Green’s Law of Debate:
Anything is possible if you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Hecht’s Law:
There is no time like the present to procrastinate.

The Queue Principle:
The longer you wait in line, the greater the likelihood that you are standing in the wrong line.

Issawi’s Law of Progress:
A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.

Ginsberg’s Theorem:
1. You can’t win; 2. You can’t break even; 3. You can’t even quit the game.

The Salary Axiom:
The pay raise is just large enough to increase your taxes and just small enough to have no effect on your take-home pay.

Wellington’s Law of Command:
The cream rises to the top. So does the scum.

Todd’s Two Political Principles:
1. No matter what they’re telling you, they’re not telling you the whole truth. 2. No matter what they’re talking about, they’re talking about money.

Kirby’s Comment on Committees:
A committee is the only life form with 12 stomachs and no brain.

The average American develops his or her first phobia at age 13.

Most common phobia in the world: odynophobia—the fear of pain.

Experts say that the most common phobia in the United States is arachnophobia: fear of spiders.

Arachibutyrophobia: the fear of having peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth.

Fear of lawsuits: liticaphobia

Fear of clowns: coulrophobia

What’s a suriphobe? Someone who’s afraid of mice.

An anemophobic person is someone who’s afraid of high winds.

Fear of making decisions: decidophobia

Fear of slime: myxophobia

How would you know a cherophobe if you met one? He or she would be afraid of having fun.

Fear of constipation: coprastasophobia

If you have keraunothnetophobia, you’re afraid of satellites falling to earth.

Fear of France: Francophobia

A fear of ventriloquist dummies: automatorsophobia

Fear of the moon: selenophobia

A cremnophobe is someone who is afraid of falling down the stairs.

Telesphobia is the name given to “the fear of being last.”

A fear of becoming bold: phalacrophobia

An ergasiophobe is someone who’s afraid of work.

Biggest civilian employer in America: the U.S. Postal Service.

Wal-Mart is the world’s largest private employer. It had over 1.6 million employees in 2005.

Ninety percent of U.S. businesses are family owned.

The original Macy’s made a total of $11.06 on its first day of business in 1858.

The Ford Motor Company earned an average two-dollar profit on every Model T it manufactured.

Three names considered before picking “Nike” for their shoe company: Falcon, Bengal, and Dimension 6.

IBM holds the most U.S. patents.

Harley-Davidson tried to trademark its engine sound and the word
hog
. Both attempts failed.

In the 1940s the Bich pen was changed to Bic. The company thought Americans would call it Bitch.

Each employee at Ben & Jerry’s headquarters gets three pints of free ice cream a day.

Every time a box of Wheaties with Tiger Woods on the front was sold, he got a dime. The farmer who grew the wheat got a nickel.

Miller Brewing donated $150,000 to its Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund in 1993, and spent $300,000 promoting the donation.

The scientific name for any object that’s shaped like a football: a prolate spheroid.

When Confucius was 16, he worked as a grain inspector.

Before he became an explorer, Amerigo Vespucci (for whom America is named) was a pickle merchant.

Benjamin Franklin gave guitar lessons.

Benjamin Franklin was America’s first newspaper cartoonist.

Will Rogers once served as honorary mayor of Beverly Hills.

Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, was once a kindergarten teacher.

Bob Hope and Billy Joel were once boxers.

Frank Sinatra once boxed under the name Marty O’Brien.

Rod Stewart once worked as a gravedigger.

Johnny Carson, Michael Douglas, and Clint Eastwood were all once gas station attendants.

Sean Connery once had a job polishing coffins.

Dustin Hoffman used to type entries for the Yellow Pages.

Danny DeVito once studied to be a hairdresser.

Drew Carey once worked in Las Vegas—as a waiter at Denny’s.

The average U.S. farm has 467 acres of land. The average Japanese farm has three acres.

Ninety percent of the world’s food crops come from only 12 species of plants.

Ninety-nine percent of the pumpkins sold in the United States end up as jack-o’-lanterns.

A typical banana travels 4,000 miles before being eaten.

U.S. hens lay enough eggs in a year to circle the equator 100 times.

It takes 4,000 grains of sugar to fill a teaspoon.

A watermelon is 92 percent water. An apple is 84 percent water.

If a cow eats onions, its milk will taste like onions.

It takes ten pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese.

The United States produces 2–4 billion pounds of chicken and turkey feathers every year.

Ears of corn always have an even number of rows of kernels.