Read Uncle John’s Did You Know? Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Did You Know? (23 page)
• Napoleon was only 26 years old when he led the French Army to a successful invasion of Italy. His last battle was at Waterloo, which he lost—that’s why when someone loses, we say they “met their Waterloo.”
• The United States produced 41,500 Sherman tanks during World War II. Today, Russia has more tanks than the United States: 21,000 to the U.S.’s 16,000. China comes in third, with 11,000.
• For the birds: Thirty-two pigeons won Dickin Medals (awarded to honor the work of animals in war) for carrying secret messages during World War II.
• The Battle of Palmito Ranch, in the far south of Texas, was the last land battle of the Civil War. The Confederates won that battle, but within a month, all their land forces had surrendered to the North.
• In 1989 the U.S. military purchased 5,118,470 pairs of green socks.
• Elastic waistbands in pants were first used during World War II—the metal used in zippers was needed for making weapons and aircraft.
• Since the founding of the United Nations in 1945 (in response to World War II), more people have been killed in wars than during World War II itself.
• In the months after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. Army bought 25,550 bottles of sunblock.
• A machine qualifies as a robot if it can a) get information from its surroundings and b) do something physical, like manipulate objects.
• Nine out of 10 robots that exist today work in factories—more than half make automobiles.
• Some robots “see” using ultrasonic sound, like bats do. But for a robot to have depth perception, it needs stereoscopic vision (two eyes) like ours.
• The robot Robug III explores places where extreme radiation would kill a human.
• In need of some underwater exploration? Sounds like a job for MIT’s RoboTuna.
• The Mini-Andros is a robot programmed to locate and dispose of bombs.
• Experts say that by 2010, robots will have the intelligence of a lizard.
• By 2020, robots will be as intelligent as mice, and they’ll be able to learn on the job.
• The 2030 robot will be as smart as a monkey.
• Aaah! By 2040, scientists expect robots to be as intelligent, competent, and creative as humans.
• Does Barbra Streisand smell better than former first lady Barbara Bush? Horticultural experts say yes, judging by the scents of the roses named after them.
• The substance in poison ivy that makes you itch is an oil called
urushiol
.
• Botany Bulletin: It’s possible to grow bananas in Iceland, in soil heated by underground hot springs.
• The trunk of the African baobab tree can reach a circumference of 180 feet.
• Average life span of a city tree: about eight years. (The same tree would live 20 to 50 years in the wild.)
• An olive tree can live for 1,500 years.
• What’s in a name? The Venus
flytrap
feeds primarily on ants—not flies.
• Builders used 3,994 oak trees to construct Windsor Castle in England.
• As many as 179 species of tree can be found in a 2.5-acre area of rain forest.
• Where does vanilla come from? From a bean—the fruit of an orchid vine that is native to Mexico.
• There’s a rose named for Whoopi Goldberg.
• Some scientists believe that cuttlefish communicate by changing their color.
• Most orcas in captivity die before they reach their early 20s; in the wild they can live 80 years or more.
• Where there’s a weigh: 250 hedgehogs = 1 lion.
• The Sumatran tiger has the most stripes of any tiger species; the Siberian tiger has the fewest.
• Baby birds have an “egg tooth”—a notch on the front of their beaks—that helps them peck out of the egg. The egg tooth falls off after they’ve hatched.
• Lions are the only cats that have a tuft on the end of their tails.
• A tiger’s paw prints are called “pugmarks.”
• The life span of a black rhinoceros is 30 to 35 years in the wild and 35 to 45 years, or even more, in captivity.
• One bird sings lots of different songs about different things: food, a nest, flying, or pretty much anything.
• The elephants that helped Hannibal’s army cross the Alps in 218 B.C. had platforms on their backs that carried four soldiers each.
• A cow can produce nearly 50 gallons of saliva a day.
• The chicken is the closest living relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex.
• Lions and tigers and…oh, my! A “liger” has a lion father and a tiger mother; a “tigon” has a tiger father and a lion mother.
• Don’t feed your cat milk—most adult cats are lactose intolerant, and drinking milk will give them diarrhea.
• Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite in space, weighed 185 pounds.
• At liftoff, the U.S. Space Shuttle weighs about 4.5 million pounds.
• No one knows why, but the Moon smells like exploded firecrackers and, therefore, moondust smells like gunpowder.
• In 1959, Able and Baker became the first monkeys to survive spaceflight after 16 minutes in a missile going at a top speed of 10,000 miles per hour.
• If you want to imagine the dramatic view of Earth that the Apollo astronauts had from the Moon, visualize the sky turning utterly black—while the Sun continues to shine brilliantly.
• Because there’s no wind or water on the Moon, the footprints left by the Apollo astronauts will not disappear for at least 10 million years.
• Techno-trivia: The technology used in one Game Boy in the year 2000 was more advanced than all the computer power used to put the first man on the Moon.
• Alan Shepard was the first American astronaut, and he flew only 116 miles into space on that first trip.
• Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon, spent only 152 minutes there.
• Rhino horns are made of compacted hair.
• The only animal that’s a danger to an adult gorilla—aside from humans—is a leopard. But the two animals rarely mess with each other.
• Hippopotamuses kill more people in Africa than any other wild animal does.
• Here’s how African buffaloes decide which direction to move: Individuals face the direction they want to go, and when enough of them are facing one particular way, the entire herd takes off in that direction.
• The good old days: Herds of springbok antelope were once the largest in the world, containing more than 10 million animals and covering an area 100 miles long and 15 miles wide.
• Scientists are still trying to figure out why only one dominant female in a colony of naked mole rats produces eggs, and why the other females don’t start to produce eggs until she dies. (By the way, they’re not really naked, they just don’t have very much hair.)
• Almost human: Older chimpanzees teach their youngsters how to use tools like sticks to extract termites from their nests, rocks to crack open nuts, and leaves to clean themselves.
• In Japan, people dial 110 in an emergency, not 911.
• Calpis is a popular yogurt-flavored soft drink in Japan, though to English speakers, the name sounds like something you might find in the corner of a barn.
• More funny drink names: Pocari Sweat (sports drink), Mr. BM (canned coffee), Sourpis (another yogurt-flavored drink).
• In Japan, the trains are so crowded that the station employees sometimes have to p-u-u-u-u-u-sh the passengers inside. And they wear white gloves to do it.
• Japanese people wash their hands and feet before going to bed.
• In public restrooms, modest Japanese women used to flush the toilets several times to cover the sound of their activities. So now many stalls have recorded “flushing” sound effects to conserve water.
• Public restrooms in Japan don’t have paper towels. Everyone carries handkerchiefs around instead.
• Most Japanese homes have combination sink-toilets. When you flush, water flows out of a faucet and into the tank so you can wash your hands as the tank fills.
• Westerners see a man in the moon. Japanese see two rabbits making rice cakes.
• When Japanese people see a hearse drive by, they hide their thumbs to protect their fathers. That’s because the word for thumb is literally “parent finger.”
• In Japan, the first dream of the new year is considered very important. If you dream of an eagle, an eggplant, or Mt. Fuji, it will be a good year.
• 25 billion pairs of chopsticks are sold every year—about 200 pairs per person.
• Japanese people wash themselves before they get into the bathtub. (The bathroom floor has a drain.)
• Western people point to their chest when talking about themselves, but Japanese people point to their nose. The Japanese character for “me” is a combination of the characters for “nose” and “rice.”
• Japanese taxis have remote-control back doors that the drivers can open without getting out of their seats.
• In Japan, store clerks hand you your change on a tray lined with what looks like Astroturf. That makes the coins easier to grab.
