Read Uncle John’s Did You Know? Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Did You Know? (6 page)
• To save their colony, some ants can actually explode in the face of the enemy.
• Some lizards have tails that break off when grabbed by an attacker. The lizard slips away, leaving the attacker holding the tail. (Not to worry, though: The tails do grow back.)
• Ready, aim, fire: The spitting cobra spits its venom right into the eyes of its enemy.
• Skunks aren’t the only animals that rely on bad odors to repel their enemies. Bedbugs, cockroaches, earwigs, foxes, minks, snakes, weasels, and wolverines do, too.
• The jawfish spits pebbles at attackers.
• Playing possum: Most people think that when opossums are threatened they pretend to be dead. Turns out they don’t—they actually faint from sheer terror.
• Zebras defend themselves with their hooves and teeth. What about their stripes? It’s possible that the stripes of a fast-moving herd make it hard for a predator to focus on any one animal.
• Among North American snakes, the eastern hog-nose has the most elaborate defense behavior: When threatened, it flattens its head and neck like a cobra and hisses loudly. Then it may strike, though it rarely bites. If these ploys fail, the snake rolls over, writhes as if in pain, opens its mouth, sticks out its tongue, and plays dead.
• Fence lizards defend themselves with camouflage: They look like tree bark, especially when they remain perfectly still.
• The slo-o-o-w-moving sloth uses camouflage as its main defense: It will hide beneath branches or curl into a ball in the fork of a tree to resemble a termite nest or a knot in the wood.
• Fake-out: The scarlet king snake (which is not venomous) looks similar to the deadly eastern coral snake. So any predator that fears the coral is very unlikely to attack the scarlet.
• Electric eels, electric catfish, and electric rays all live up to their names: They emit an electrical shock to stun or injure attackers.
• The skin of a skink (a type of lizard) is covered with scales that overlap smoothly, making them slippery and difficult for predators to catch.
• Since the beginning of recorded history, about 550 different volcanoes have erupted on the surface of the Earth—but a lot more than that have erupted on the ocean floor.
• The word “volcano” probably comes from Vulcano, a volcanic island near Sicily, Italy. The island’s name came from Vulcan, the god of fire in Roman mythology.
• What countries have the most active volcanoes? Indonesia, Japan, and the United States, in that order.
• Mount Kilauea (kee-la-WAY-ah) on the island of Hawaii is the most active volcano on Earth. Perhaps that’s because it’s the legendary home of the powerful—and short-tempered—goddess Pele (peh-LAY).
• Fifty American volcanoes have erupted in recorded history.
• The Yellowstone Caldera (a caldera is the crater of a volcano) in Yellowstone National Park is at least two million years old. It hasn’t erupted violently for the last 640,000 years.
• While lava is still underground, it’s called
magma
.
• Hot lava eventually solidifies to form two kinds of lava, both with Hawaiian names. One is
a’a
(AH-ah), whose surface is rough and broken; the other is called
pahoehoe
(pah-HOY-HOY) and has a smooth surface.
Italians say
“pronto”
when they answer the phone, meaning “I’m ready.” Here are some more facts about other languages
.
• Schools in different parts of India teach courses in 58 different languages.
• The word
ka
has 214 different meanings in Japanese.
• Only 19% of the people in Wales can speak their nation’s historic (and co-official) language, Welsh.
• The Sanskrit word for “war” means “desire for more cows.”
• The letter F can be pronounced five different ways in Icelandic.
• In Brazil the number six has two different names:
seis
and
meia
. Because
seis
and
três
(three) sound similar, Brazilians say
meia
(which means “half,” as in “half-dozen”) when saying phone numbers.
• There are 6,800 languages in the world, but experts think half will be extinct by the end of this century.
• Only one person in the world still speaks the Eyak language: Marie Smith, of Anchorage, Alaska—and she’s 88 years old.
• Nearly 900 million people in the world speak Chinese; 341 million speak English. How many American schoolchildren study Chinese? About 50,000.
• Why do we throw coins in fountains to make wishes come true? The ancient Greeks started it—they threw coins in their wells, hoping to keep the wells from running dry.
• The first wishbones were used by the Etruscans, who lived 2,500 years ago in what’s now Italy. They would lay the wishbone in the sun to let it dry, and people would come by to stroke it and make a wish.
• A wishbone is a turkey’s clavicle, or collarbone.
• The things that a bride wears for good luck: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. The tradition comes from a poem, the next line of which is “and a silver sixpence in her shoe.”
• When an eyelash falls out, put it on your finger, make a wish, and blow it away.
• Next time you find a penny, wear it in your left shoe and your wish will come true.
• People wish on a falling stars, rainbows, a new moon, or the first star they see at night.
• A sure way to make a wish come true is to kiss your elbow. Go ahead, try it!
• In medieval England, mincemeat pie was a common Christmas dish. People believed if you made a wish on your first bite of pie, it would come true.
• If the English alphabet were lined up in the order from the most frequently used letters to the least used, it would look like this: E T A I S O N H R D L U C M F W Y P G V B K J Q X Z.
• Q is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the names of any of the 50 United States.
• Longest entry in Webster’s dictionary: the word “set,” with 75 definitions.
• The only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is “uncopyrightable.”
• The longest place name in the world is
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu
, in New Zealand. In Maori it means: “The brow of the hill where Tamatea—the man with the big knees, who slid down, climbed up and swallowed mountains, traveled the land and is known as the Land Eater—played his nose flute to his loved one.”
• A
tilde
(~) over an n in Spanish changes the sound from “n” to “nya.” So
mañana
is pronounced “mah-NYAH-nah.”
• You’d think the last letter of the Greek alphabet should be zeta, but it’s not—it’s omega.
• Certain species of mice build “signposts” out of leaves and twigs to keep themselves from getting lost.
• In 2001 archaeologists in Syria found a 3,800-year-old recipe for beer.
• It is estimated that, on average, one of the world’s languages disappears every two weeks.
• A gardener in Germany lost his driver’s license for driving a lawn mower while intoxicated.
• Some of the items found during California’s annual Coastal Cleanup Day: two phone booths, a styrofoam Tiki god, Scooby-Doo underwear, a plastic eyeball, a “Just Married” sign, half a bowling ball, fuzzy dice, a check written to Taco Bell for $8.78, Dracula teeth, and porcupine bones.
• Mountain climber George Mallory—who, when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, uttered the famous line “Because it is there”—disappeared on the mountain in 1924. His body was recovered in 1999 at 21,300 feet.
• In 2005 the most valuable buried treasure in history was found on an island off the coast of Chile. The booty, buried by pirates in 1715, included gold and jewels now worth more than $10 billion.
Bat around some big words and show everybody how smart you are
.
• The study of ants is called
myrmecology
.
• Compulsive nose picking is called
rhinotillexomania
.
•
Scatologists
are scientists who study poop. When most people use the word “scatological,” they mean obscene.
• A flea expert is a
pullicologist
.
• Vomiting is also called
emesis
, from the Greek word for puking.
• Snap your fingers. That’s called a
fillip
.
• The last word in many English dictionaries is
zyzzyva
, the name of a tropical weevil. It’s also sometimes used to mean “the last word” in any situation.
• If you’ve never had a haircut, that makes you
acersecomic
.
• Sounds like a fun job: People who study laughter are called
gelotologists
.
•
Taphephobia
is the fear of being buried alive.
•
Plutology
is the study of wealth. A plutocrat is a wealthy person.
•
Mammonism
is the greedy pursuit of riches, “mammon” being the biblical word for material wealth.
• Think pizza: America’s best-selling herb is oregano.
• Americans eat 75% of their raisins at breakfast.
• The world’s longest sushi roll measured 328 feet in length.
• The most valuable lunchbox in the world? A 1954 Superman lunchbox that sold for $13,500 at auction.
• The Incas used to create highly prized pots in the shape of peanuts.
• There are five basic flavors: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and
umami
—the savory taste of meat.
• No one knows how 7UP got its name.
