Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (37 page)

IF YOU
have to choose between total lack of sleep or food for the next 10 days, go with lack of food. You’ll die from total lack of sleep sooner (in about 10 days) than from starvation (a few weeks).

IF YOU
are the electrician in charge of the lighting on a movie or TV set, you’re a gaffer. If you’re an assistant to the gaffer, you’re known as the “best boy.”

IF YOU
weigh 120 pounds on earth, you’d weigh about 20 pounds on the moon.

IF YOU
listen to a cricket chirp, you can figure out the temperature. Count the number of chirps per 15 seconds and add 40. That’ll give you the temperature (Fahrenheit).

IF YOU
are trying to find a tiny object on the floor, put a bare light at floor level. The light will cause the object to cast a shadow, making it easier to spot.

Swedish law prohibits trained seals from balancing balls on their noses.

In Athens, Greece, you can lose your driver’s license for being “poorly dressed” or “unbathed.”

Penalty for stealing a rabbit in 19th-century England: seven years in prison.

It’s OK to duel in Paraguay as long as you’re a registered blood donor.

It’s against French law to reveal the true identity of a member of the French Foreign Legion.

It’s against the law to slam your car door in Switzerland.

Wearing a necktie in some parts of Iran can get you thrown in jail.

Paris law forbids spinning tops on sidewalks . . . and staring at the mayor.

Nineteenth-century Scottish law required brides to be pregnant on their wedding day.

The law in Teruel, Spain, forbids taking hot baths on Sunday. (Cold baths are OK.)

If you curse within earshot of a woman in Egypt, the law says you forfeit two days’ pay.

In Equatorial Guinea, it’s illegal to name your child Monica.

In England it’s against the law to sue the queen—or to name your daughter Princess without the queen’s permission.

In Israel, it’s illegal to pick your nose on the Sabbath.

Honeybees are not native to North America. They were introduced from Europe in the 1600s by the Puritans.

Bees have different dialects. A German bee cannot understand an Italian bee.

Honey never spoils. In fact, honey placed in tombs in Southampton, England, over 400 years ago, was still good when the tombs were opened.

Bees use ultraviolet vision to see which flowers have the largest amounts of nectar.

A typical American consumes about a pound of honey per year.

A typical worker bee lives for one month and in that time collects enough nectar to make about 1/12 teaspoon of honey.

Honey comes in different colors and flavors—there are more than 300 unique kinds of honey in the United States alone. Why? Honey is made from diverse flower sources—clover, eucalyptus, or orange blossom, for example—and soil chemistry and honeycomb quality also influence how it tastes and looks.

An experiment: Will bees feed from water that’s been artificially sweetened with Sweet’N Low? No.

In the days of sailing ships, when someone died on board or a national leader died, ships slackened their rigging, which gave the ship a disheveled look that was supposed to symbolize mourning, “the nautical equivalent of walking around in sackcloth and ashes.” Lowering flags partway down the mast was another part of the practice, the only part that survives to this day.

No one knows for sure when or where the first lighthouse was built. Early lighthouses were too simple to be recorded; some were little more than candles placed in the windows of tall buildings at night. Others were hilltop structures on which large fires could be built. The earliest known lighthouses were built on the Mediterranean Sea in the 7th century B.C.

The Great Lighthouse at Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Completed around 280 B.C., it stood about 450 feet high on the island of Pharos in the Alexandria harbor. Still in operation as late as 1115, it was destroyed by earthquakes in the 1300s.

The oldest working lighthouse in the world is Spain’s Tower of Hercules, built by the Romans in 20 B.C.

The oldest American lighthouse is the Boston Light, in Boston’s outer harbor. Built in 1716 on Little Brewster Island, it was destroyed by the British during the American Revolution. It was rebuilt in 1783 and still stands today.

Before electricity, lighthouses provided light via wood or coal fires, or even candles. These were replaced by whale-oil lanterns, which gave way to kerosene lanterns in the 1800s. Keeping such a light continually lit wasn’t easy. In the United States, most lighthouses had a full-time keeper (nicknamed Wickies because they kept the lantern wicks trimmed), who lived at the lighthouse and made sure it stayed lit.

First American lighthouse to use electricity: the Statue of Liberty, which served as a lighthouse in New York Harbor until 1902.

Every working lighthouse in the United States is automated. The last manned lighthouse, Maine’s Goat Island Light, became automated in 1990.

In an average day, Americans sweat enough moisture to provide the city of Pittsburgh with a 24-hour supply of water.

When you exercise strenuously in hot weather, you can sweat away as much as two quarts of water in an hour, enough to cause your weight to drop during the workout. But this weight loss is only temporary. Since the weight you lose is all water, you gain it back as soon as you drink liquids and your fluid levels return to normal. Note: Many serious athletes measure their weight immediately before and after their workouts to determine how much water they need to drink to rehydrate themselves. It’s about one pint per pound of weight loss.

On average, women can tolerate a body temperature of 1°F higher than men before they break into a sweat. But once they start to perspire, women produce just as much sweat as men do.

Where on your body you sweat the most depends on the reason why you’re sweating: Are you hot or nervous? Cooling sweat shows up most on your forehead, upper lip, neck, and chest; nervous sweat appears most in your palms, feet, and armpits.

What is it like to sweat in the weightlessness of space? It’s pretty gross . . . at least according to Rhea Seddon, a NASA doctor and astronaut who has flown on the space shuttle
Columbia
. “It pools on your skin and balls up into large, fist-size globules of sweat that sort of land on you. It’s kind of yucky.”

DOG

English: Bow-wow

Swedish: Voff Voff

Hebrew: Hav Hav

Chinese: Wang-wang

Japanese: Won-won

Swahili: Hu Hu Hu Huuu

CAT

English: Meow

Hebrew: Miyau

German: Miau

French: Miaou

Spanish (and Portuguese and German): Miau

ROOSTER

English: Cock-a-doodle-doo

Arabic: Ku-ku-ku-ku

Russian: Ku-ka-rzhi-ku

Japanese: Ko-ki-koko

Greek: Ki-ki-ri-koo

Hebrew: Ku-ku-ri-ku

DUCK

English: Quack Quack

Swedish: Kvack Kvack

Arabic: Kack-kack-kack

Chinese: Ga-ga

French: Quahn Quahn

OWL

English: Who-whoo

Japanese: Ho-ho

German: Koh-koh-a-oh

Russian: Ookh

FROG

English: Croak

Spanish: Croack

German: Quak-quak

Swedish: Kouack

Russian: Kva-kva

GOOSE

English: Honk Honk

Arabic: WackWack

German: Schnatter-Schnatter

Japanese: Boo Boo

CHICKEN

English: Cluck-cluck

French: Cot-cot-cot-codet

German: Gak-gak

Hebrew: Pak-pak-pak

Arabic: Kakakakakakakakaka

PIG

English: Oink Oink

Russian: Kroo

French: Groin Groin

German: Grunz

Detroit has more “registered” bowlers than any other American city.

Fort Worth, Texas, was never a fort.

The U.S. census defines a place with 2,500 people as a town. If it has 2,501 or more, it’s a city.

There are over 15,000 miles of neon lights in the signs along the Las Vegas strip.

Ropesville, Lariat, and Loop are all towns in Texas.

The 13th step of the state capitol in Denver, Colorado, is exactly one mile above sea level.

There’s a town in Texas called Ding Dong.

The population of Washington, D.C., is greater than the population of Wyoming.

City with the largest Polish population on earth: Warsaw. Second largest Polish population: Chicago.

Florida’s Disney World is larger than the entire city of Buffalo, New York.

City with the highest number zip code in the United States: Ketchikan, Alaska—99950.

Most of New York City’s Broadway was once known as Bloomingdale Road.

At last count, 167 different languages are spoken in New York City.

Los Angeles is two centimeters closer to San Francisco than it was a year ago.

Alepouomancy:
Draw a grid in the dirt outside your village. Each square represents a different question. Sprinkle the grid with peanuts, wait for a fox to eat them, then study the fox’s footprints to see how the questions are answered.

Alphitomancy:
Feed a special cake to an alleged wrongdoer. An innocent person will be able to eat and digest the cake; a guilty person will gag on the cake or become ill.

Bibliomancy:
Open the Bible and read the first passage you see to learn your fortune. (In some Christian denominations, this is grounds for excommunication.)

Dilitiriomancy:
Feed African benge poison to a chicken. Ask the gods a question, being careful to end the question with, “if the chicken dies, the answer is yes,” or “if the chicken dies, the answer is no.” Then wait to see if the chicken dies.

Haruspication:
Study the guts of an animal, preferably a sacred one.

Hepatoscopy:
Study only the animal’s liver; ignore the rest of the guts.

Pynchonomancy:
Throw darts at a paperback copy of
Gravity’s Rainbow
, by Thomas Pynchon, then read the sentence on the deepest page penetrated by the dart.

Scarpomancy:
Predict someone’s future by studying their old shoes.

Scatomancy:
Predict your future by studying your own poop. (Not to be confused with spatulamancy, the study of “skin, bones, and excrement.”)

Stichomancy:
Read the first passage of any book you see.

Tiromancy:
Study the shape, holes, mold, and other features on a piece of cheese to determine your future.

Uromancy:
Predict someone’s future by studying their urine.

In the 1960s the Rolling Stones began calling themselves the World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band.

Mick Jagger runs the equivalent of five miles on stage during each Rolling Stones concert.

The duo Air Supply (“All Out of Love”) played a gig at the Karl Marx Theater in Cuba in July 2005.

Country star Lyle Lovett is afraid of cows.