Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (31 page)

RECLUSE

Myth:
While writing
Walden
, Henry David Thoreau lived in isolation in the woods of Massachusetts.

Truth:
Thoreau’s two-year retreat to Walden Pond was like a little boy pretending that his backyard tree house is in the middle of the jungle. In truth, Thoreau built his famous cabin a scant two miles from his family’s home and spent very little time in isolation. “It was not a lonely spot,” wrote Walter Harding in
The Days of Henry Thoreau
. “Hardly a day went by that Thoreau did not visit the village or was visited at the pond.” Thoreau was even known to return home on the weekends to raid the family cookie jar.

INCOGNITO

Myth:
To escape Union capture, Confederate president Jefferson Davis fled Richmond disguised in his wife’s dress.

Truth:
Rather than admit defeat by surrendering to the Union army, Davis fled to Texas with the hope of reorganizing his troops. However, on May 10, 1865, he was apprehended in Georgia. Clad in a gray suit as he hastily greeted the Union troops, he accidentally grabbed his wife’s cloak to protect him from the cold. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton presented the false story of Davis disguising himself in a dress to the
New York Herald
, which published it on May 16, 1865.

ROBIN HOOD

Myth:
“Jesse James was a man who killed many a man. / He robbed the Glendale train. / He stole from the rich and he gave to the poor. / He’d a hand and a heart and a brain.”

Truth:
Jesse Woodson James, who was born in Missouri in 1847, did indeed rob from the rich. Most of the money that he stole, however, he kept for himself. A child of slave-owning aristocrats, Jesse James made a name for himself as one of the Confederate marauders known as Quantrell’s Raiders during the Civil War. His move to robbing banks after the war was inspired by a deep hatred of the Northern industry that was becoming widespread in the pastoral South. It is true that he killed many a man—most of them innocent bystanders.

Netherlands used to be known as the United States.

Europe is the only continent without a desert.

The Berlin Wall was 26.5 miles long.

Oldest unchanged flag in history: Denmark’s. It has remained the same since the 13th century.

Reykjavík, Iceland, one of the coldest cities in the world, is heated almost entirely by hot springs.

The British Isles have no mountains higher than 5,000 feet.

World’s largest harbor: Rotterdam Harbor in the Netherlands.

Florence, Italy, was the first city in Europe to have all of its streets paved.

Europe is the most densely populated continent in the world.

The world’s largest cemetery: the Friedhof Ohlsdorf in Hamburg, Germany. It covers 990 acres.

Many restaurants in France allow dogs and even offer special menus for them.

Denmark has the highest income tax in the world, as high as 52.6 percent.

Finland has more islands than any other country: 179,584.

Largest empire in all of human history: the British empire of the 19th century.

Venice, Italy, is built in a lagoon on top of 118 islands.

Biggest French-speaking city: Paris. Second: Montreal.

England is two-thirds the size of the New England states.

Netherlands is the only country with a national dog: the Keeshond.

The federal government owns about 29 percent of the land in the United States.

If any of the heads on Mt. Rushmore had a body, it would be nearly 500 feet tall.

Big Bend National Park (Texas) is home to 350 species of birds—more than any other national park.

There are 898 steps in the Washington Monument.

More than half of all the geysers in the world are in Yellowstone National Park.

The U.S. Capitol has 365 steps—one for each day of the year—from the basement to the top of the dome.

Number of marine wildlife sanctuaries in the United States where fishing is illegal: zero.

Officially designated wilderness in the United States: 4.7 percent.

Walt Disney World generates about 56 tons of trash every day.

At last count, 1,013 buildings in the United States have a sign that reads “George Washington slept here.”

Disney World is twice the size of Manhattan.

Cost of a single-day ticket to Disneyland in 1955: $10. In 2005: $56.

old fossil

new beginning

fellow countrymen

appreciated in value

3 a.m. in the morning

old geezer

illegal scam

successful escape

strangled to death

awkward predicament

Each year Americans consume 8 million pounds of guacamole on Super Bowl Sunday.

New York jewelers Tiffany & Co. are responsible for making the Super Bowl trophy.

Electronics companies sell five times as many big-screen TVs during Super Bowl week.

The Super Bowl is broadcast to over 182 countries in the world.

Roger Staubach holds the record for most career Super Bowl fumbles, with five.

The average Super Bowl get together includes 18 people.

Advertisers pay an average of just over $2 million per 30-second commercial during a Super Bowl game.

The Dallas Cowboys have played in a record eight Super Bowls and have won five of them.

The largest margin of victory in a Super Bowl is 45 points. In Super Bowl XXIV, the San Francisco 49ers defeated the Denver Broncos 55–10.

Joe Montana is the only player to be named Super Bowl MVP three times. He won all three awards while playing quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers.

Steve Cristie kicked the longest field goal in Super Bowl history, in 1994: 54 yards.

More than 86 million Americans watched the Super Bowl in 2005.

Believe it or not, Roto Rooter claims they’ve found the following items in clogged pipes:

HOME AND GARDEN:
Broom handles, doorknobs, garden hoses, bungee cords, and a hummingbird feeder.

HEALTH AND BEAUTY AIDS:
Glass eyes, gold teeth, dentures, contact lenses, toothbrushes, hearing aides, and toupees.

CLOTHING AND LINENS
: Women’s lingerie, long johns, towels, robes, a complete bedspread, and, of course, a multitude of missing socks.

ELECTRONICS:
TV remotes, pagers, an alarm clock, a Timex that took a licking and kept on ticking, and a Rolex that took a licking and died.

SPORTING GOODS AND TOYS:
An eight ball, golf balls (30 in one drain), a shrimp net, a tear-gas projectile, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle doll.

PETS:
Birds, bats, beavers, cats, ducks, fish, frogs, possums, skunks, a piranha, a two-and-a-half-pound trout, and lots of snakes—including a 6-foot rattlesnake.

VALUABLES:
$400 in coins, $58 in change in a Laundromat pipe, canceled checks, a $4,000 diamond, and $50,000.

GROCERIES:
A Cornish game hen and a six-pack of Budweiser.

In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world’s nuclear weapons combined.

More ships have been sunk by hurricanes than by warfare.

Dust storms in Arizona caused 119 car crashes in 2003.

The state with the most lightning and thunderstorms: Florida, the “Sunshine State.”

Ninety percent of all the tornadoes in the world occur in the United States.

At this moment, nearly 2,000 thunderstorms are taking place around the world.

About 65 percent of all hurricanes tracked since 1900 have occurred in August and September.

More thunderstorms—3,000 a day—hit the tropics than any other place on earth.

The Australians used to name hurricanes after unpopular politicians.

In Australia, hurricanes are called “tropical cyclones.” And dust storms in the Outback are called “Willy Willies.”

At any given moment, about half of the earth is covered by clouds.

Tornadoes move with wind speeds of 100 to 300 mph.

An estimated 25 million cloud to ground lightning bolts kill an annual average of 73 people in the U.S.

An average spot on earth receives 33.86 inches of rain and precipitation annually.

Scientists learn about the moisture in clouds by studying the dew on spiderwebs.

Odds that a thunderstorm will strike Daytona, Florida, in the next four days: 100 percent.

Cockroaches stowed away on the
Apollo XII
flight.

A flea can jump 30,000 times without taking a break.

The first job of a newborn queen bee is to kill the other newborn queens so she can rule alone.

Queen bees only sting other queen bees.

There are 290,000 beetle species on earth, the most of any animal.

If a grasshopper is hungry enough, it will eat the paint off your house.

Most snails are born with their shells.

The average caterpillar has 2,000 muscles in its body. The average human, less than 700.

A female flea can drink 15 times her weight in blood a day.

Queen termites can lay 86,000 eggs a day.

Constipation kills more fruit flies than any other ailment.

It wasn’t until 1954 that scientists recognized that REM (rapid eye movement) during sleep was caused by dreaming. Here’s more:

Once you’re in REM the muscles of your middle ear begin vibrating (scientists don’t know why). Pulse and breathing speed up. (But we breathe less oxygen and use fewer calories than in other stages of sleep.) Eyes dart all over the place, “seeing” what we’re dreaming.

We can dream without REM, but scientists have established that these dreams are simple and uneventful. REM dreaming, on the other hand, is the more exciting, dramatic kind. We do REM dreaming about two hours a night. In a lifetime, this adds up to five or six years of REM dreaming.

You may think that because your body seems to go off-line, your mind does, too. Not so. Your brain spends the night integrating the information and experiences you’ve gained during the day, and most of this happens during REM sleep. Laboratory tests showed that if mice learned complex tasks and then were deprived of their REM time, they forgot what they learned. In tests on University of Ottawa students, researchers noticed that the faster students learned things, the more REM time they required. Slower learners needed less REM time.

Life stresses and changes also increase the need for REM. Using a group of divorcing women in their early 30s as subjects, psychoanalyst Rosalind Cartwright conducted a study that demonstrated they needed more REM time to assimilate their big changes.

Most people don’t reach REM until about an hour and a half after going to sleep; people with depression, however, get to REM in about half that time. They also experience it more intensely.

REM occupies approximately 22 percent of sleeping time.

The longest case of constipation ever recorded lasted 102 days.

The longest recorded sneezing fit was 978 consecutive days.

According to Guinness, the longest recorded bout of hiccups lasted for 65 years.

People with brain disorders suffer from far fewer headaches than the general public.

As far as anyone can tell, only humans get headaches.

Big blisters are called vesicles; small ones are called bullae.