Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (26 page)

baby calf

circle around

slippery slime

hollow tube

illegal poaching

old adage

NFL football team

merge together

sandwiched between

reflect back

Billy the Kid’s first crime? Stealing clothes from a Chinese laundry.

In the Old West, more cowboys died crossing swollen rivers than during gunfights.

Billy the Kid was buried in a shirt five sizes too big.

Buckeroo
is the anglicized form of
vaquero
, the Spanish word for cowboy.

Two black aces and eights are called the “dead man’s hand.” It’s what Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot dead in the Number Ten Saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory.

Wild Bill Hickok had a brother. His nickname was Tame Bill.

Jesse James issued his own press releases.

Legendary Johnny Ringo didn’t die with his boots on—his killer made him take them off before shooting him.

1860 ad for Pony Express riders: Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.

There were no ponies in the Pony Express.

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral lasted 30 seconds and left three bad guys dead and three good guys wounded.

John Henry “Doc” Holliday was a doctor of dentistry.

The notorious Black Bart (Charles E. Bolton) robbed 27 Wells Fargo stagecoaches in his day; on his release from San Quentin prison, he disappeared and was never heard from again.

Jesse James’s father was a Baptist minister.

Cowboys called jail the hoosegow after the Spanish word
juzgado
, meaning “court of justice.”

You can think 625 thoughts on the caloric energy of one Cheerio.

Eat one lump of sugar and you’ve eaten the equivalent of three feet of sugar cane.

According to food researchers, thyme helps prevent tooth decay.

The calories in a bagel with cream cheese can run an electric toothbrush for 52 hours, 20 minutes.

The darker green a vegetable is, the more vitamin C it contains.

A bowl of Wheaties contains twice as much sodium as a bowl of potato chips.

One big difference between canned and fresh vegetables is salt. There’s up to 40 times more in cans.

The USDA recommends five servings of fruits and veggies a day. The average adult eats 4.4. Kids eat 3.4.

The only food that provides calories with no nutrition is sugar.

The peanut is one of the most concentrated sources of nourishment.

The most popular fruit in the United States: apples, followed by oranges and bananas.

Broccoli was first introduced to the United States in the 1920s. Today 27 percent of Americans say broccoli is their favorite vegetable.

Pound for pound, oysters have 20 times as much cholesterol as eggs.

Spinach consumption in the United States rose 33 percent after the Popeye comic strip became a hit in 1931.

You burn 26 calories with a one-minute kiss.

HISTORY.
In the years following the French Revolution of 1789, the French Republic tried to make a clean break from the past by inventing a new form of government, new names for the seasons, a new calendar with new names for all of the days and months, and other such innovations. Over the next 30 years most of these reforms fell by the wayside, but one of them didn't—the metric system.

THE METER.
Originally intended to be exactly one 10-millionth the length of the distance between the North Pole and the equator. The only problem: Measuring instruments weren’t precise enough to measure such a vast distance accurately, so the length that was chosen for the meter turned out to be the wrong one. By the time scientists discovered this, however, the meter’s length—39.37 inches—was so widely accepted that they decided not to change it.

LITERS, KILOGRAMS, GRAMS.
Once the scientists designing the metric system settled on the length of the meter, they used it to create measurements for mass and volume. They designed a cube with each side exactly one-tenth of a meter (a decimeter) long and filled it with water. The space that the water filled was designated as a liter, and the amount the water weighed was called a kilogram, which was then subdivided into 1,000 units called grams.

Note:
One reason the metric system caught on with scientists was that in the traditional measurement system, there were no standard units smaller than an inch or larger than a mile, which made it tough to measure extremely large and extremely small distances. With the metric system, it was much easier to invent new measurements when they became necessary.

How many hairs on your head? If you’re blond, about 150,000. Brunet, 100,000. Redhead, 60,000.

There are 550 hairs in the average eyebrow.

About 10 percent of men and 30 percent of women shave solely with an electric razor.

There are about 15,500 hairs in an average beard.

Women start shaving at a slightly younger age than men do.

Half of Caucasian men go bald. Eighteen percent of African American men do.

American Indians rarely go bald.

Hair is unique to mammals.

Fifty percent of Americans have gray hair by the time they’re 50 years old.

Number of hair follicles on an average adult: 5 million.

City dwellers have longer, thicker, denser nose hairs than country folks do.

The older you get, the slower your hair grows.

Cutting hair does not influence its growth.

Hair covers the whole human body, except for the soles of the feet, the palms, mucous membranes, and lips.

The average life span of a human hair: three to seven years.

Your hair is as strong as aluminum.

Women shave an area nine times as large as men do.

Medical studies show that intelligent people have more copper and zinc in their hair.

SUEDE

From:
Sweden

Explanation:
Gants de Suede
is French for “gloves of Sweden.” It was in Sweden that the first leather was buffed to a fine softness, and the French bought the
gants de Suede
. Suede now refers to the buffing processes—not to any particular kind of leather.

TURKEY

From:
Turkey

Explanation:
Turk
means “strength” in Turkish. The turkey bird is a large European fowl named after the country of its origin. American colonists mistakenly thought a big bird they found in the New World was the same animal . . . so they called it a turkey.

CHEAP

From:
Cheapside, a market in London

Explanation:
The Old English word was
ceap
(pronounced “keep”), which meant “to sell or barter.” Because Cheapside was a major market where people went to barter for low prices, the word gradually took on a new pronunciation . . . and meaning.

MAYONNAISE

From:
Port Mahon, Spain (according to legend)

Explanation:
The
-aise
suffix is French for “native to” or “originating in.” Mahonnaise was supposedly created to celebrate a 1756 French battle victory over the British on the Spanish isle of Port Mahon.

DENIM

From:
Nimes, France

Explanation:
The tough cloth used in jeans was also made in Nimes. It was called
serge di Nimes
—later shortened to
di nimes
, which became
denim
.

COFFEE

From:
Kaffa, Ethiopia

Explanation:
According to legend, coffee beans were first discovered in the town of Kaffa. By the 13th century, the Kaffa beans had traveled, becoming
qahwah
in Arabia,
café
in Europe, and finally
coffee
in the New World.

COLOGNE

From:
Cologne, Germany

Explanation:
Scented water that was produced there beginning in 1709 was named for the city.

SLAVE

From:
Slavonia, Yugoslavia

Explanation:
After large parts of Slavonia were subjugated by Europeans in the Middle Ages, a Slav become synonymous with someone who lived in servitude. Eventually
Slav
became
slave
.

LIMERICK

From:
Limerick, Ireland

Explanation:
The town was popularly associated with humorous verses that had five lines, the first two rhyming with the last, the middle two rhyming with each other. The poems became an English fad in the mid-19th century, and people naturally identified them with the town’s name.

HAMBURGER

From:
Hamburg, Germany

Explanation:
People in the immigration-port city of Hamburg—called Hamburgers—liked to eat raw meat with salt, pepper, and onion-juice seasoning, a treat brought to them via Russia that we call steak tartare today. A broiled version using chopped meat eventually became popular in America.

TURQUOISE

From:
Turkey/Europe

Explanation:
Another Turkish origin. Turquoise comes from a number of places, but was probably first imported to Europe from Turkey. So it was called turquoise, which means “Turkish stone.”

Farthest distance a pumpkin has been hurled without the use of explosives: 3,718 feet.

T. D. Rockwell had his name and address tattooed on his body in 27 different languages, including Morse code, shorthand, and semaphore.

Record for most haircuts given in an hour: 23, by Scot Sandy Dobbie.

A New York man carried a milk bottle on his head continuously for 24 miles.

In 1923 French sports reporter Pierre Labric rode his bicycle down the 347 stairs of the Eiffel Tower. It took him three minutes and 17 seconds. His bike was wrecked.

The World’s Largest Office Chair is in Anniston, Alabama. It’s 33 feet tall.

The world’s longest zipper, with over 12,600 teeth, was presented to President Ronald Reagan in 1985. It’s now in the Smithsonian.

A museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, dedicated to nuts also has the world’s largest nutcracker.

Longest underwater kiss on record: 2 minutes and 18 seconds.

Elaine Davidson, of Edinburgh, Scotland, has a record-breaking total of 720 body piercings, including 192 on her face and head.

Al Gliniecki of Gulf Breeze, Florida, tied 39 cherry stems into knots in three minutes using his tongue.

The world’s longest earthworms—found only in a small corner of Australia—can grow to as long as 12 feet and as thick as a soda can.

Ancient Romans trained elephants to perform on a tightrope.

Squids have the largest eyes in nature—up to 16 inches across.

Australia’s mallee bird can tell temperature with its tongue, accurate to within two degrees.

Not only does the three-toed sloth sleep 20 hours a day, it also spends most of its life upside down.

By using air currents to keep it aloft, an albatross may fly up to 87,000 miles on a single feeding trip without ever touching the ground. That’s more than three times around the earth.

The chamois—a goatlike mountain antelope—can balance on a point of rock the size of a quarter.