The World's Greatest Book of Useless Information (4 page)

YOU HAIRY APE

King Kong is the only movie to have its sequel (Son of Kong) released in the same year (1933).

King Kong was Adolf Hitler’s favorite movie.

Skull Island is the jungle home of King Kong.

SHARK TALE

Bruce was the nickname of the mechanical shark used in the Jaws movies.

In the 1983 film Jaws 3D, the shark blows up. Some of the shark guts were stuffed E.T. dolls being sold at the time.

ENJOY THE SHOW

One of the many Tarzans, Karmuala Searlel, was mauled to death by a raging elephant on the set.

Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.

Dirty Harry’s last name is Callahan.

In Psycho, Mrs. Bates’s dress was periwinkle blue.

SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED

Felix Leiter is James Bond’s CIA contact.

James Bond is known as “Mr. Kiss-?Kiss-?Bang-?Bang” in Italy.

Jean-?Claude Van Damme was the alien in the original Predator in almost all the jumping and climbing scenes.

More bullets were fired in Starship Troopers than in any other movie ever made.

The famous theme ostensibly from Dragnet was actually composed by Miklos Rozsa for the 1946 film noir classic The Killers.

Godzilla has made the covers of Time and Newsweek.

Gone With the Wind is the only Civil War epic ever filmed without a single battle scene.

The movie Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor, was banned from Egypt in 1963 because Taylor is a Jewish convert.

The movie Clue has three different endings. Each ending was randomly chosen for different theaters. All three endings are present on the DVD.

The movie Paris, Texas was banned in the city Paris, Texas, shortly after its box-?office release.

The skyscraper in Die Hard is the Century Fox Tower.

The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in jelly.

The word mafia was purposely omitted from the Godfather screenplay.

Dracula is the most filmed story of all time. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is second, and Oliver Twist is third.

When the movie The Wizard of Oz first came out, it got bad reviews. The critics said it was stupid and uncreative.

THE NUMBERS GAME

Smokey the Bear’s zip code is 20252.

Dirty Harry’s badge number is 2211.

Sleeping Beauty slept one hundred years.

Approximately sixty circus performers have been shot from cannons. At last report, thirty-?one of them have been killed.

There are twenty-?two stars surrounding the mountain on the Paramount Pictures logo.

In 1938, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel sold all rights to the comic-?strip character Superman to their publishers for $130.

The number of the trash compactor in Star Wars is 3263827.

Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make. Of that amount, $5 million went to actors’ salaries.

In an episode of The Simpsons, Sideshow Bob’s criminal number is 24601, the same as the criminal number of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables.

All the clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.

The longest film ever released was **** by Andy Warhol, which lasted twenty-?four hours. It proved, not surprisingly (except perhaps to its creator), an utter failure. It was withdrawn and re-?released in a ninety-?minute form as The Loves of Ondine.

The longest Hollywood kiss was from the 1941 film You’re in the Army Now; it lasted three minutes and three seconds.

A Chinese checkerboard has 121 holes.

There are 225 spaces on a Scrabble board.

There are one hundred squares on a Snakes and Ladders board.

The total number of bridge hands possible is 54 octillion.

There are 311,875,200 five-?card hands possible in a fifty-?two-?card deck of cards.

The wheel on the game show Wheel of Fortune is 102 inches in diameter.

John Travolta’s white suit from Saturday Night Fever was auctioned off for $145,500; Judy Garland’s ruby slippers for $165,000; Charlie Chaplin’s hat and cane for $211,500; Elvis’s jacket for $59,700; and John Lennon’s glasses for $25,875.

THE LITERARY WORLD

PAGE TO SCREEN

Bambi was originally published in 1929 in German.

General Lew Wallace’s best-?seller Ben-?Hur was the first work of fiction to be blessed by a pope.

The name for Oz in The Wizard of Oz was thought up when the author, L. Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A–N and O–Z, hence Oz.

THE USELESS INFORMATION BOOK CLUB

An estimated 2.5 million books will be shipped in the next twelve months with the wrong covers.

Louisa May Alcott, author of the classic Little Women, hated children. She only wrote the book because her publisher asked her to.

Susan Haswell Rowson was America’s first bestselling novelist for her novel Charlotte Goode.

During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville’s timeless classic of the sea, Moby Dick, only sold fifty copies.

Guinness World Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.

Lassie, the TV collie, first appeared in a 1930s short novel titled Lassie Come Home, written by Eric Mow-?bray Knight. The dog in the novel was based on Knight’s real-?life collie, Toots.

In 1898 (fourteen years prior to the Titanic tragedy), Morgan Robertson wrote a novel called Futility. The plot of the novel turned on the largest ship ever built hitting an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean on a cold April night.

Keeping Warm with an Axe is the title of a real how-?to book.

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at the age of nineteen.

Virginia Woolf wrote all her books standing up.

At twelve years old, an African man named Ernest Loftus made his first entry in his diary and continued every day for ninety-?one years.

People in Iceland read more books per capita than any other people in the world.

During the eighteenth century, books that were considered offensive were sometimes “punished” by being whipped.

The all-?time bestselling electronic book is Stephen King’s Riding the Bullet.

The only person to decline a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was Sinclair Lewis for his book Arrowsmith.

Roger Ebert is the only film critic to have ever won the Pulitzer Prize.

Tom Sawyer was the first novel written on a typewriter.

Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, smoked forty cigars a day for the last years of his life. He was born in 1835 when Halley’s Comet appeared. He died in 1910 when Halley’s Comet returned.

Ghosts appear in four Shakespearian plays: Julius Caesar, Richard III, Hamlet, and Macbeth.

World heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney also lectured on Shakespeare at Yale University later in his life.

Shakespeare spelled his own name several different ways.

Goethe couldn’t stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if he had an apple rotting in the drawer of his desk.

For the 66 percent of Americans who admit to reading in the bathroom, the preferred reading material is Reader’s Digest.

Ernest Vincent Wright wrote the fifty-?thousand-?word novel Gatsby without any word containing “e.”

The original Aladdin story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, “Aladdin was a little Chinese boy.”

Dr. Seuss pronounced his name so it would rhyme with rejoice. His birthday is March 2.

Dr. Seuss coined the word nerd in his 1950 book If I Ran the Zoo.

Sherlock Holmes’s archenemy was Professor Moriarty. Holmes had a smarter brother named Mycroft.

Sherlock Holmes never said, “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

Writer Edgar Allan Poe and LSD-?advocate Timothy Leary were both kicked out of West Point.

Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey decimal category.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was the most famous editor at Doubleday & Co.

Hans Christian Anderson, author of many famous fairy tales, was word-?blind. He never learned to spell correctly, and his publishers always found errors in his manuscripts.

Dr. Jekyll’s first name is Henry.

Charles Dickens never finished his schooling. He was also an insomniac, who believed his best chance of sleeping was in the center of a bed facing directly north.

BIBLE TALK

Almost all the villains in the Bible have red hair.

The last word in the Bible is Amen.

The longest chapter in the Bible is Psalms 119.

There are more than 1,700 references to gems and precious stones in the King James Version of the Bible.

The Bible is the number-?one shoplifted book in America.

The book of Esther in the Bible is the only book that does not mention the name of God.

The term devil’s advocate comes from the Roman Catholic Church. When deciding if someone should be sainted, a devil’s advocate is always appointed to give an alternative view.

The Bible has been translated into Klingon.

It is believed that Shakespeare was forty-?six around the time the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the forty-?sixth word from the first word is shake, and the forty-?sixth word from the last word is spear.

Every minute, forty-?seven Bibles are sold or distributed throughout the world.

According to Genesis 1:20–22, the chicken came before the egg.

All Hebrew-?originating names that end with the letters “el” have something to do with God.

A seventeenth-?century Swedish philologist claimed that in the Garden of Eden God spoke Swedish, Adam spoke Danish, and the serpent spoke French.

ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?

A phonophobe fears noise.

Carcinomaphobia is the fear of cancer.

Paedophobia is a fear of children.

Nyctohylophobia is the fear of dark wooded areas, or forests at night.

Pyrophobia is the fear of fire.

Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive.

Telephonophobia is the fear of telephones.

Papaphobia is the fear of popes.

Nycrophobia is the fear of darkness.

Lachanophobia is the fear of vegetables.

Entomophobia is the fear of insects.

Eosophobia is the fear of dawn.

Clinophobia is the fear of beds.

A gynaephobic man fears women.

Arnold Schonberg suffered from triskaidecphobia, the fear of the number thirteen. He died thirteen minutes from midnight on Friday the thirteenth.

Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.

Zoophobia is the fear of animals.

Tonsurphobia is the fear of haircuts.

Xenophobia is the fear of strangers or foreigners.

Phobatrivaphobia is fear of trivia about phobias.

NOW SAY IT THREE TIMES FAST

The world’s longest name is Adolph Blaine Charles Daivid Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorft Sr.

A hydrodaktulpsychicharmonica is a variety of musical glass.

The Book of Useless Information

The Book of Useless Information

The Book of Useless Information

Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and hydroxydeoxycorticosterones…

The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnos.

The longest place name still in use is Taumatawhakatangihangaoauauotameteaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu—a New Zealand hill.

The longest place name in Great Britain is that of a Welsh village: Gorsafawddachaidraigddanheddogleddollonpenrhynareurdraethceredigion.

The most difficult tongue-?twister is “The sixth sick Sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.”

FORGET ME NOT

According to German legend, this flower gets its name from the last words of a knight, who was drowned while trying to pick some from the riverside for his lady.

IN THE BEGINNING

During early years of feudal rule in England, each shire had a reeve who was the law for that shire, called the shire reeve. When the term was taken to America, it was shortened to sheriff.

The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law stating that you cannot beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

The phrase “sleep tight” originated when mattresses were set upon ropes woven through the bed frame. To remedy sagging ropes, one would use a bed key to tighten the rope.

The term potty comes from the pint-?sized chamber pot built for children.

The word noon came from an old church term none, meaning “three.” There was a monastic order that was so devout they declared they would not eat until that time. Because they rang the bells indicating time, “none” came earlier and earlier. The townspeople called midday noon to ridicule them.

Before the turn of the century, newspapers were called tabloids, chronicles, gazettes, etc. Most had local stories, and far away stories were quite old because it took a while for stories to travel (and of course, they were subject to changes from hand to hand). With the advent of the teletype, stories could be broadcast all over at unheard-?of speed. Several of the papers started carrying a section with stories from all over—north, east, west, and south—and that’s why they are called newspapers.

Some coins used in the American colonies before the Revolutionary War were Spanish dollars, which could be cut into pieces, or bits. Because two pieces equaled one-?quarter dollar, the expression “two bits” came into being as a name for twenty-?five cents.

Ham radio operators coined the word ham from the expression “ham-?fisted operators,” a term used to describe early radio users who sent Morse code by pounding their fists.

Happy as a clam” is from the expression “happy as a clam at high tide.” Clams are only harvested when the tide is out.

The grand jury used to write ignoramus on the backs of indictments not found or not to be sent to court. This was often misconstrued as an indication of the stupidity of the jury, hence its present meaning.

In the 1940s, the Bich pen was changed to Bic for fear that Americans would pronounce it “bitch.”

People didn’t always say “hello” when they answered the phone. When the first regular phone service was established in 1878, people said “ahoy.”

In the late nineteenth century and earlier years of the twentieth century, when gramophones or phonographs amplified the sound through large horns, woolen socks were often stuffed in them to cut down the noise; hence the phrase “put a sock in it.”

The phrase “son of a gun” derives from the days when women were allowed to live on naval ships. The son of the gun was one born on the ship, often near the mid-?ship gun, behind a canvas screen. If the paternity was uncertain, the child was entered in the log as “son of a gun.”

The magic word abracadabra was originally intended for the specific purpose of curing hay fever.

The phrase “Often a bridesmaid, but never a bride” actually comes from an advertisement for Listerine mouthwash.

The term honeymoon is derived from the Babylonians, who declared mead, a honey-?flavored wine, the official wedding drink, stipulating that the bride’s parents be required to keep the groom supplied with the drink for the month following the wedding.

The phrase “the boogeyman will get you” refers to the Boogey people who still inhabit an area of Indonesia. These people still act as pirates today and attack passing ships.

The term mayday used for signaling for help (after SOS) comes from the French M’aidez, which is pronounced mayday and means “help me.”

“Three-?dog night” (attributed to Australian Aborigines) came about because on especially cold nights, these nomadic people needed three dogs around them to keep from freezing.

In 1943, Navy officer Grace Hopper found a glitch in her computer. After investigating, she discovered the system had a bug—a real one. It turned out a moth had made its way into Hopper’s computer. Though the word bug has meant “fault” or “defect” since as far back as the 1870s, Hopper’s story is credited with making it the synonym of choice in the computer industry.

Clans long ago who wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn down their houses—hence the expression “get fired.”

The etymology of the “F-?word” remains uncertain, but its origins are likely Anglo-?Saxon. When the word became considered vulgar is also unclear. It was acceptable speech in England until as recently as the seventeenth century.

The expletive “Holy Toledo” refers to Toledo, Spain, which became an outstanding Christian cultural center in 1085.

The expression “What in tarnation?” comes from the original phrase “What in eternal damnation?”

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition, from 1910–1911, the word toast was borrowed from the Old French toste, which has the Latin root of torrere, tostum, meaning “to scorch or burn.”

Crack gets its name because it crackles when you smoke it.