Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (81 page)

Bonus Questions:

1.
They’re traveling at almost exactly the same speed—1 knot is equal to 1.151 miles, which means the ship is traveling at 46.04 mph.

2.
The funny bone

3.
You made $20—$10 on the first sale; $10 on the second.

4.
The moon and its physical features

5.
10° Celsius or Centigrade (to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, subtract 32 and then multiply by
).

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE

Tossup:
Wild Bill Hickok

Bonus Questions:

1.
In your pancreas (they produce insulin)

2.
A countess

3.
Pain

4.
Ships or boats

5.
Kill it—the
musca domestica
is the scientific name for the common housefly.

G.E. COLLEGE BOWL

(Answers for
page 303
)

SCIENCE & MATH

Tossup:
18 feet (300 yards/10 seconds = 30 yards per second. 30/5 = 6 yards per fifth of a second = 18 feet per second)

Bonus Questions:

1.
James drank sulphuric acid.

2.
Liquid

3.
James Van Allen—he discovered the Van Allen belts in 1958.

4.
Only one—the number 2. Every other even number is divisible by 1, itself,
and
2, which means it is not prime.

After decades of civil war, there are more than 1 million live landmines buried in Mozambique.

5.
Call 911—you’re having a heart attack!

U.S. HISTORY

Tossup:
Treason (Article 3, Section 3)

Bonus Questions:

1.
Andrew Johnson; Dwight D. Eisenhower

2.
Aaron Burr (he shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804)

3.
Abraham Lincoln

4.
Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania

5.
To put down the Whiskey Rebellion and resume collection of the federal tax on whiskey in Pennsylvania

GEOGRAPHY

Tossup:
Afghanistan

Bonus Questions:

1.
The (U.S.) Virgin Islands

2.
Vaduz

3.
Australia

4.
The Caspian Sea—the world’s largest landlocked body of water

5.
The Aleutian Islands, in Alaska

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE

Tossup:
Massachusetts, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Virginia

Bonus Questions:

1.
A tomato

2.
General John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing

3.
A map of the moon

4.
By planting thousands of apple trees and giving seedlings and seeds to everyone he met. (He’s better known as Johnny Appleseed.)

5.
Maid Marian

U.S. CITIZENSHIP TEST (EASY)

(Answers for
page 177
)

1.
The White House

2.
13

3.
The original 13 colonies

4.
50

5.
The 50 states. A new star is added to the flag every time a state enters the union. Originally the plan was to add a star
and
a stripe every time a state entered the Union, but that would have made the flag taller than it is wide; either that or the stripes would have become so thin that the appearance of the flag would have changed drastically. In 1818 the number of stripes was dropped from 15 to 13, and after that, only stars were added to the flag.

6.
The Congress

7.
The president

8.
Germany, Italy, and Japan

No two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.

9.
Alaska (49) and Hawaii (50)

10.
To escape religious persecution (see
page 44
).

11.
The
Mayflower

12.
18

13.
George Washington

14.
The Congress

15.
The House of Representatives and the Senate

16.
The Democratic Party and the Republican Party

17.
“The Star-Spangled Banner”

18.
Francis Scott Key

19.
November

20.
January

21.
Thanksgiving

22.
Thomas Edison

23.
England

U.S. CITIZENSHIP TEST (MEDIUM)

(Answers for
page 334
)

1.
A veto

2.
The adoption of the Declaration of Independence

3.
Freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, of assembly, and to petition the government

4.
Nine. The number varied from six to ten in the 19th century; then in 1869 the number was set at nine. An odd number was chosen to prevent tie votes.

5.
The president of the United States

6.
The Congress. However, as commander in chief, the president can order soldiers into combat without a declaration of war from Congress. The Korean War (1950–53), the Vietnam War (1957–75), and the Persian Gulf War (1991) were all undeclared wars.

7.
The citizens of the United States

8.
The electoral college. Each state has as many votes, or
electors
, in the Electoral College as it has U.S. senators and representatives in Congress (and the District of Columbia has three votes). In some states, the ballot may only show the names of the presidential candidates. In those states, you are actually casting votes for the elector, who will vote for the presidential candidate you prefer. In most states, all of the electoral college votes go to the presidential candidate who wins the highest number of the state’s popular votes.

9.
The legislative, executive, and judicial branches

10.
The president

11.
Slavery and states’ rights

In Florida, it’s against the law to hunt or kill deer while they’re swimming.

12.
To interpret laws

13.
435. In addition, four “delegates” represent the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam, and a “resident commissioner” represents Puerto Rico. These officials can cast votes in committee and on some votes that come before the full House, but they are not full voting members.

14.
100

15.
Each of the 50 states has two senators.

16.
The Bill of Rights

17.
6 years

18.
2 years

19.
2 full terms. When the Constitution was written, there was no limit to how many terms a president could serve. Before Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933–1945), no president had ever run for more than two consecutive terms, out of respect for the precedent set by George Washington, who declined to run for a third term. FDR broke the tradition—he ran (and won) four times.

The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, limited presidents to two terms, or only one term in the case of a vice president who has served more than two years of another president’s term, such as when a president dies in office or is impeached and removed from office.

20.
There is no limit.

21.
Patrick Henry. According to tradition, Henry said it in 1775 during the Virginia Provincial Convention. The following year he became independent Virginia’s first governor, and he was largely responsible for the passage of the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

U.S. CITIZENSHIP TEST (HARD)

(Answers for
page 473
)

1.
The right to vote. (All other rights depend on it.)

2.
Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson wanted his friend John Adams to write it, but Adams believed Jefferson was the better man for the task, and gave three reasons: “Reason first: You are a Virginian, and Virginia ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second: I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular; you are very much otherwise. Reason third: You can write 10 times better than I can.”

3.
27 (so far)

4.
The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Next in the line of succession is the president pro tempore of the Senate (traditionally the majority-party senator with the longest history of continuous service), followed by the members of the cabinet in the order in which their departments were established: the secretary of state, followed by the secretary of treasury, secretary of defense, the attorney general, and the secretaries of the interior, agriculture, commerce, labor, health and human services, housing and urban development, transportation, energy, education, veterans affairs, and homeland security. The secretary of bathroom reading is not an official member of the cabinet; Uncle John sits upon his throne but will probably never be president.

In 19th-century Britain, you could be hanged for associating with Gypsies or stealing bread.

5.
Virginia, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Delaware, and Georgia

6.
The president must: 1) be a native-born citizen; 2) be at least 35 years old; and 3) have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years.

7.
1787

8.
You’ll have to answer this yourself—Uncle John has no idea where you live!

9.
The 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th amendments

10.
The president, the cabinet, and the departments under the cabinet members. Here’s an easy rule of thumb: If it’s part of the federal government but isn’t part of the federal courts or the Congress, it’s part of the executive branch.

11.
The Preamble. It lays out the purpose of the Constitution in clear language, and establishes that the new government being established gets its powers from the people, and not vice versa. The Preamble reads:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

12.
Everyone who lives in the United States, whether they are citizens or not

13.
Abraham Lincoln

14.
The Mississippi River

15.
A
republican
form of government—that means that the citizens elect representatives who form the government. This is also known as a
representative democracy
. In a
direct
or
pure
democracy, the voters would make the laws themselves instead of electing representatives to do it for them. The ancient Greek city-state of Athens was governed by a direct democracy.

According to DC Comics, Batman is 6’2” and weighs 220 pounds.

16.
That all men are created equal.

17.
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

RIDDLE ME THIS

(Answers for
page 232
)

1.
Stars

2.
A wheelbarrow

3.
A splinter

4.
A lawsuit

5.
A pillow

6.
A hearse

7.
Heroine

8.
Your lap

9.
A nail

10.
Your temper

11.
Your leg

12.
Asteroids

OL’ JAY’S BRAINTEASERS

(Answers for
page 167
)

1. BRIGHT THINKING

Standing in the hallway, Amy turned on the first light switch. She waited two minutes and then turned on the second light switch. Then after another minute she turned them both off. When she walked into the library, one was very hot, the other was slightly warm, and the other was cold—making it easy for her to tell Uncle John which switch turned on which lamp.