Read Uncle John’s Did You Know? Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Did You Know? (15 page)
• Of all the continents, Antarctica is the coldest (with temperatures as low as –129°F), the windiest (with winds as strong as 190 mph), and the highest (with an average altitude of 7,200 feet above sea level).
• Antarctica is the only continent that has never had a native population of humans.
• Some people
visit
Antarctica, though. Summer population: 4,115. Winter population: 1,046.
• Antarctica isn’t “owned” by any country. In 1959, 12 nations (including the United States, France, Japan, and the Soviet Union) signed the Antarctic Treaty that set aside the continent for scientific study.
• 90% of all the ice on Earth is located in Antarctica.
• Antarctica has loads of ice, but it gets very little rainfall—only slightly more than the Sahara Desert gets—and doesn’t have much snowfall. Technically, that makes this ice-covered continent the largest
desert
on Earth.
• In the winter, the ocean around Antarctica freezes into a vast ice sheet—more than 7 million square miles. The frozen seawater causes deep ocean currents that then drive ocean-current patterns all over the world.
• You might be surprised to know that the South Pole has the clearest, calmest weather of any place on Earth.
• Octopusses are highly intelligent. One at the Bronx Zoo in New York City figured out how to unscrew the lid from a jar to get to the food inside…in two minutes.
• Black sheep have a better sense of smell than white sheep.
• In one year a single beaver can chomp down more than 200 trees.
• Chickens have terrible night vision.
• A honeybee will die after it stings you—but only if it’s a female.
• The next time you see a loaf of bread in the supermarket, think of this: It’s larger than a newborn polar-bear cub and about the same weight.
• Millions of years ago, dolphins had legs. They looked like wolves (but acted more like cows).
• One little slug can have as many as 27,000 teeth.
• Sea otters use flat stones and rocks to help them pry mussel shells free from rocks and then open them.
• The clown fish lives among sea anemones, luring in other fish for the sea anemones to eat.
• The three-toed sloth is the slowest mammal in the world, barely reaching 0.1 miles an hour.
• 45% of Americans don’t know that the sun is a star. (Did
you
?)
• Approximately 25% of American kids aged 6 to 14 have a magazine subscription.
• Only 40% of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments.
• Seven out of 10 American homes use candles.
• 80% of American homes have at least one can of WD-40 lubricant.
• 70% of Americans 50 or older say they’re “very patriotic.” Only 32% of 18- to 34-year-olds say they are.
• 63% of Americans aged 18 to 24 cannot locate Iraq on a map of the Middle East. (Can
you
?)
• Most Americans actually read the nutrition info on food packages, but half of those who
do
say they often purchase items even if they’re high in fat or sugar.
• 90% of Americans say they believe in God. (Only 68% believe in the Devil.)
• Eggs-actly two out of five Americans say they eat breakfast every day.
• 22% of the world’s beer is produced in the United States.
• Guys who’ve been there say that when NFL running back Jerome “The Bus” Bettis crashed into you, it felt like you’d been hit by a bus.
• Eldrick “Tiger” Woods is named after a Vietnamese soldier-friend of his father.
• Teammates called Willie Mays “The Say Hey Kid” because before he knew all their names, he greeted them with “Say hey, man.”
• Baseball star Hideki Matsui was a feared hitter even as a kid. He earned the nickname “Godzilla” during Japan’s 1992 high school championships.
• Basketball player Karl “The Mailman” Malone got his nickname because “he always delivers.”
• All-around athlete and Olympic champ Mildred “Babe” Didrickson Zaharias was named for Babe Ruth after she hit five home runs in a baseball game.
• Hockey’s Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion invented the slapshot. Fans say that his stick hit the puck so hard, it made a booming sound.
• Baseball pitcher Leroy “Satchel” Paige was nicknamed by a friend who was with him on a day when he tried to steal a suitcase.
• The United States Postal Service handles over 40% of the world’s mail volume.
• The world’s largest post office is in Chicago, Illinois; the smallest is in Ochopee, Florida.
• In 1973, the nation of Bhutan issued a set of postage stamps that were tiny phonograph records. They could be played on a turntable and featured folk songs.
• The first stamps didn’t have any sticky stuff on the back—you had to paste, pin, or sew the stamp onto the envelope.
• The U.S. Postal Service processes 38 million address changes each year.
• The largest stamp ever printed was issued by China; it measured 8 ¼ × 2 ½ inches.
• Any unused U.S. postage stamps issued since 1861 are still valid as postage at their indicated value.
• The Russian space station
Mir
had its own post office.
• A Greek stamp issued in 1954 held the most words ever printed on a stamp: 746.
• Horses, dogs, pigeons, camels, reindeer, and cats have all been used to deliver mail. Only the cat service didn’t work out.
• The oldest working post office, in Scotland, has been in operation since 1712.
You know what a group of cows is called: a herd. But what do you call groups of these animals?
• An army of frogs
• A crash of rhinoceroses
• A gang of elks
• An exaltation of larks
• An unkindness of ravens
• A knot of toads
• A sounder of swine
• A mustering of storks
• A bouquet of pheasants
• A skulk of foxes
• A drift of hogs
• A charm of finches
• A clowder of cats
• A shrewdness of apes
• A murmuration of starlings
• A smack of jellyfish
• An ostentation of peacocks
• A sleuth of bears
• A span of mules
• A pace of donkeys
Don’t read this if you’re not a lefty. (Oh, okay, go ahead.)
• At one time in Japan, a husband could divorce his wife if he found out she was left-handed.
• Four of the last six U.S. presidents have been lefties: Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.
• In ancient Rome, the left side of the human body was considered evil, and the right side good, so the Latin word for left is
sinister
. The French word for left is
gauche
, which means crude or socially inept. In fact, the word “left” comes from an old English word
lyft
, which means worthless.
• Males outnumber females in left-handedness two to one. And female lefties are much more likely to describe themselves as “tomboys.”
• Good news: Lefties make up around 10% of the population but over 20% of Mensa, the high IQ society. Bad news: They also make up more than their share of the populations of prisons and mental institutions.
• Prince Charles and Prince William of England are both southpaws.
THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE MODERN
WORLD
From a list by the American Society of Civil Engineers
.
•
The Empire State Building
, completed in 1931, soars 1,250 feet over New York City. It was the world’s tallest building until 1972 (the title is now held by the Taipei Financial Center in Taiwan, at 1,671 feet).
•
Itaipu Dam
, built on South America’s Parana River by Brazil and Paraguay, is the world’s largest hydroelectric power plant. It is actually a series of dams whose length totals nearly five miles. Finished in 1991, it took 16 years to build.
•
The Panama Canal
, a 50-mile man-made waterway across the Isthmus of Panama, took 34 years to build. The amount of digging it required made it the most expensive project in American history up to that time—and the deadliest, too: About 80,000 people died during its construction, mostly from disease.
•
The Channel Tunnel
, also known as the “Chunnel,” links France and England. It is 31 miles long, and for 23 of them, it runs 150 feet beneath the seabed of the
English Channel. There are no cars in this tunnel—high-speed trains whiz through its side-by-side tubes.
•
The CN Tower
is the world’s tallest freestanding structure, rising about one third of a mile (about 1,815 feet) above Toronto, Canada. A glass floor on the observation deck lets you look down 1,100 feet to the ground. But don’t worry—the glass is strong enough to hold 14 hippos!
•
The North Sea Protection Works
was a project nearly as big as the Great Wall of China. The Netherlands is below sea level, so this series of dams and floodgates was built to keep the sea from flooding the country during storms. The biggest part of the project, finished in 1986, was a two-mile-long movable “surge barrier” made of 65 concrete piers, each weighing 18,000 tons.
•
The Golden Gate Bridge
, which connects San Francisco and Marin County, California, was completed in 1937. At 1.2 miles long, it was for many years the world’s longest suspension bridge. Experts had thought that winds, ocean currents, and fog would make it impossible to build, but in fact the bridge was built in only four years. The cables that link its two towers are 36.5 inches in diameter—the biggest cables ever made.
• Boxer Mike Tyson once owned a house that had 38 bathrooms.
•
Q:
Why are there crescent moons on outhouse doors?
A:
Just like today, public toilets 100 years ago were separated by gender, but because many people back then couldn’t read, a half-moon indicated a men’s room and a star denoted a ladies room.