Read Uncle John’s Did You Know? Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Did You Know? (20 page)
French:
Le poivre fait fièvre à la pauvre pieuvre
.
English translation:
“The pepper gives the poor octopus fever.”
Hawaiian:
Hele wawai o ka malamalama, ka malamalama, o ka malamalama, hele wawai o ka malamalama, ka malamalama o ke Akua
.
English translation:
“I am walking in the light, in the light, in the light, I am walking in the light, in the light of God.”
Latin:
Te tero Roma manu nuda date tela latete
.
English translation:
“I’ll crush you, Rome, with my bare hands.”
Italian:
Trentatré Trentini entrarono a Trento, tutti e trentatré, trotterellando
.
English translation:
“Thirty-three Trentonians came into Trento, all thirty-three trotting.”
Japanese:
Kaeru pyoko-pyoko mi pyoko-pyoko awasete pyoko-pyoko mu pyoko-pyoko
.
English translation:
“Take two sets of three frog croaks. Add them together and they make six frog croaks.”
Zulu:
Amaxoxo ayaxokozela exoxa ngoxamu exhibeni
.
English translation:
“The frogs are talking loudly about the monitor lizard.”
Some animals have pretty cool dads
.
• A father sea catfish keeps the eggs of his young in his mouth until they’re ready to hatch. He won’t eat a thing until the babies are born, which can take weeks.
• After a mother wolf gives birth to pups, the father guards the den. As the pups grow, he plays with them and teaches them how to live in the wild.
• Rheas are large South American birds similar to ostriches. From eggs to chicks, the father rhea feeds, defends, and protects his young until they can survive on their own.
• The male Darwin frog hatches the female’s eggs in his mouth. He eats and continues his normal frog life until the tadpoles become tiny frogs and jump out.
• The male red fox will bury food near the den to train his pups to sniff and forage, and he’ll play ambush games with them to teach them self-defense.
• When a Siamese fighting fish mom lays her eggs, the dad catches them in his mouth and drops them into a nest he’s prepared. He stands (or swims) guard over the nest, too.
• A cockroach dad eats bird droppings to obtain precious nitrogen that he carries back to feed his young.
• According to legend, the Abominable Snowman has four toes on each foot.
• In almost every seafaring culture there have been reports of mermaid sightings. Even Christopher Columbus said he’d seen one.
• Don’t blink! According to legend, if you’ve captured a leprechaun you cannot take your eyes off him…or he’ll vanish.
• There’s a round-the-clock webcam now trained on the lake where the Loch Ness Monster supposedly lives. (No one’s seen the creature yet.)
• Chinese dragons—especially yellow ones—are considered to represent good fortune.
• A dragon is often portrayed as guarding an object or an area. Makes sense: The word “dragon” comes from the Greek
draconta
, which means “to watch.”
• Greek mythology has a lot of monsters: griffins (part eagle, part lion), the Hydra (a nine-headed serpent), Cerberus (the three-headed hound who guards the entrance to Hades), the one-eyed Cyclops, and the three Gorgons (female monsters who had sharp fangs and hair of living, venomous snakes), to name a few.
Every state has something to brag about (including the fact that you live there)
.
• Arkansas has the only active diamond mine in the United States.
• The only royal palace in the United States, Iolani Palace, is in Hawaii. Its last occupant, Queen Liliuokalani, was forced to surrender Hawaii to the American government in 1893.
• The washing machine was invented in Newton, Iowa, in 1884…which is why Newton is the washing machine capital of the world.
• The world’s largest ball of twine is 40 feet around and weighs more than 17,000 pounds. It stands inside its own shrine in Cawker City, Kansas.
• New Mexico has an official state question: “Red or green?” The answer refers to types of chili peppers.
• Maine is the only state whose name is one syllable.
• Shoes were first sold as left-and-right pairs in 1884 at Phil Gilbert’s Shoe Parlor in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Before that, everybody just bought two shoes that were exactly the same.
• Ahlgrim’s Funeral Home in Palatine, Illinois, has a miniature golf course in the basement. You need to call for a reservation to play.
• The word “ecology” means “study of the house,” from the Greek
eco
for house or dwelling place.
• How would they do it? A group of NASA engineers and American astronomers believe that moving Earth into a new orbit would solve the problem of global warming—or at least add another 6 billion years to its life.
• Rain forests cover only 7% of the Earth’s surface, but they contain more than half the plant and animal species on the planet.
• In 2006 Alaska’s Iditarod dogsled race had to be moved 30 miles north—the usual location wasn’t cold enough (because of global warming).
• There are still undiscovered species in the rain forests, but experts fear that they might become extinct before they’re found and recorded.
• Almost 70% of the Earth is water, but only 1% is usable: 97% is in the ocean and 2% is frozen.
• In a typical day, humans destroy 115 square miles of tropical rain forest, create 72 square miles of desert, eliminate between 40 and 100 species, erode 71 tons of topsoil, and increase their population by 263,000.
• 40% of the pure water in your house gets flushed down the toilet.
Name games that inspired the teams
.
•
Arizona Cardinals:
The original 1901 team wore hand-me-down jerseys from the University of Chicago. They were red, like a cardinal.
•
Baltimore Ravens:
Named after a poem by Baltimore’s native son, Edgar Allan Poe: “The Raven.”
•
Chicago Bears:
When the Decatur Staleys moved to Chicago in 1921, they had to share Wrigley Field with a Major League Baseball team—the Cubs. With that in mind, the team changed its name to the Bears.
•
Green Bay Packers
: It was the first football team to receive sponsorship. In 1919, the Indian Packing Company gave the team $500 for uniforms and equipment.
•
Philadelphia Eagles:
When the team joined the National Football League in 1933, the country was recovering from the Great Depression. The Blue Eagle symbol used in President Franklin Roosevelt’s National Recovery program inspired the Eagles’ name and logo.
•
Kansas City Chiefs:
After being lured out of Texas by Kansas City mayor H. Roe “Chief” Bartle, the Dallas Texans changed their name to the Chiefs.
• It’s common for a mockingbird to know 25 to 30 songs. Although most songbirds learn their songs before they’re one year old, a mockingbird keeps learning new tunes its whole life.
• Real airheads: If you’ve ever wondered if woodpeckers get headaches from all that hammering, the answer is no. Pockets of air in their heads act as cushions for their brains.
• Albatrosses can travel thousands of miles each flight, landing only every few years to breed. Luckily for them, they’re able to sleep while they fly.
• The hummingbird is the only bird that can hover and fly in any direction: up, down, forward, or backward.
• In some cultures, cuckoos are considered omens of a happy marriage.
• Lovebirds are small parrots that mate for life—that’s why it’s so important that they’re kept in pairs in captivity.
• Ever wonder how many feathers there are in a peacock’s beautiful tail display? Around 200.
• Flying in a V formation helps birds conserve energy: It reduces wind resistance, and when the lead bird gets tired, another bird takes over.
This word-based board game is one of the most popular of all time. Ever played it?
• Scrabble is sold in 121 countries around the world and has been translated into 29 different languages.
• If you played the word QUARTZY as your first word in a game, it could be worth 126 points.
