Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids (7 page)
Read Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers' Institute
Virginia has the highest percentage of vanity plates at 16.1 percent, followed by New Hampshire (14 percent), Illinois (13.4 percent) and Nevada (8.2 percent). Texas has the fewest (just 5 percent).
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UMâ¦YUM?
The most popular pie dish in ancient Rome was placenta. But it's not as gross as it soundsâthe human organ was actually named because it resembled this dessert, a sort of cheesecake pie.
Influenza
means “influence” in Italian. The illness was so named because doctors in 1743 believed its spread was under the influence of certain “evil” stars and constellations.
Almost all flu viruses first infect chickens, then pigs, and then spread to humans, mutating along the way. But the “chicken flu” of 1997 made medical news because it jumped directly from birds to humans, bypassing pigs.
People typically begin spreading the flu a day before they show any symptoms.
In 2003 a British fan claimed that Paul McCartney had given him the flu and tried to sell his germs on eBay. The bidding reached just $1.83 before eBay took down the offer.
Despite what you've heard, people with the flu often
do
sneeze and have runny noses. In many cases, even doctors have difficulty distinguishing the flu from a cold.
The “Spanish” flu didn't come from Spain. It began in Kansas in 1918, and America's soldiers spread it worldwide during World War I. But the disease got its name because Spain, as a neutral country during the war, had a fairly unrestricted press that was free to report about the pandemic, which gave the world the impression that the disease was more deadly in Spain.
Flu viruses can live up to 48 hours on hard metal or plastic surfaces. They can live 8 to 12 hours on dry porous surfaces like paper money, and only about 15 minutes on skin.
The “stomach flu” or “24-hour flu” is not at all related to influenza.
In general, older people were more protected against the 2009 swine flu outbreak than younger people, because many who had a flu illness before 1957 were infected with a similar virus and thus had some immunity.
Zombies originated from followers of the Vodou (Anglicized to “Voodoo”) religion, which was born in Haiti and came to the U.S. with immigrants. The term “zombie” may come from the Caribbean word
jumbie
or the West African Kimbundu word
nzambi
, both of which mean “ghost.”
The tradition of walking dead people appears in many cultures, though, including Chinese, Persian, Arabian, Native American, and European. In fact, in the Middle Ages, the French believed that the dead would awaken as emaciated corpses to avenge any crimes against them.
Vodou tradition says that you can get a zombie to return to the graveyard by feeding it salt.
A 1929 fictional book,
The Magic Island
by William Seabrook, brought zombies to mainstream America. In 1932 the first zombie movie appeared, a horror film starring Bela Lugosi,
White Zombie
.
Biologist Wade Davis investigated reports of zombie slaves in Haiti and discovered they may be true. A cocktail of poisons from puffer fish and cane toads can put a victim in a zombielike state.
In September,2012, FEMA offered a free webinar about being prepared for a zombie apocalypse.
According to mathematicians at the University of Ottawa, humanity would be unlikely to survive a full-scale zombie attack. In 2009 the researchers wrote: “While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.”
Each year, bets placed on the Super Bowl total about $10 billion.
In the 48 hours after the Super Bowl, 6 million people view (or review) the commercials on YouTube.
Most rewatched Super Bowl moment: Janet Jackson's 2004 “wardrobe malfunction.”
Max McGee of the Green Bay Packers scored the first Super Bowl touchdown in 1967. He made a one-handed catch on a pass from quarterback Bart Starr and ran 37 yards to the end zone. The 34-year-old veteran went on to a total of seven catches, gaining 138 yards and two touchdowns, leading to a 35â10 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.
Most Super Bowl wins as of 2013: Pittsburgh Steelers (6).
The only team to play in four consecutive Super Bowls is the Buffalo Bills (1991â94). They are also the only team to lose four consecutive Super Bowls.
Four teams have never gone to the Super Bowl: the Detroit Lions, Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Houston Texans.
In 2005, of the 93 million people who watched the Super Bowl, only 2 percent lived outside North America.
Number of footballs made exclusively for use in the Super Bowl every year: 144. Of those, 72 are to be used during the game, and 72 more are back-ups.
Cost of a 30-second Super Bowl commercial in 2012: $3.5 million.
Super Bowl I was broadcast live by both CBS and NBC, using the exact same video but with their own announcers.
Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach holds the record for the most career Super Bowl fumbles: 5.
Collectively, Americans consume the most food on Thanksgiving, but Super Bowl Sunday is #2.
Of the 35,000 known species of spiders, only about 500 can bite humans. And of those, only 20 to 30 are significantly poisonous.
Despite their name, black widow spiders don't really eat their mates any more often than other spiders, and they aren't
that
poisonous: 99 percent of people who are bitten survive.
Spiders can get caught in their own webs, so they walk on special dry strands that aren't sticky. If a spider gets stuck by mistake, it secretes an oily solvent to free itself.
Some spider babies eat their moms.
The weight of insects eaten by spiders every year is greater than the weight of all the humans on earth.
Not all spiders spin webs. Some just wait and leap out to catch bugs. Others chase bugs down. And the spitting spider spits out gobs of sticky, venomous fluid to capture its prey.
A butterfly's wings will not stick to spider silk.
A house spider can build a traditional web in about an hour.
Jimmy Carter began his presidency with his hair parted on the right, but left office with his hair parted on the left.
To transform actor Lon Chaney Jr. into the Wolf Man (1941), Hollywood make-up artists spent five hours a day applying yak hair to his face and body.
Ringo Starr thought the Beatles would be a short-lived fad: he was just hoping to make enough money to open a hair salon.
Regular washings in saffron kept Alexander the Great's hair a bright orange.
On Easter in 1105, Bishop Serlo of Seiz chastised England's King Henry I and his court for “wearing their hair like women.” After the service, the king begrudgingly allowed the bishop to cut his waist-length hair.
Walt Disney first started drawing cartoons in exchange for free haircuts.
Everyone's favorite redhead, Lucille Ball, actually had brown hair.
It was called “the most expensive haircut of all time” when Justin Bieber abruptly changed his look in 2010. Not expensive to
him
, but to all the manufacturers who had licensed his image to plaster on products like clothes, school supplies, and bags. One company that made Bieber dolls spent about $100,000 to trim their locks in time for the Christmas season.
John Reznikoff is the world's foremost collector of celebrity hair. He has bits from people like Michael Jackson (singed from his Pepsi ad accident) and Abraham Lincoln (cut by the surgeon after his assassination).
Bart Simpson has nine spikes of hair on his head.
The premise of the TV show
24
was that each season's 24 episodes took place in 24 hours of a single day. To keep the illusion, cast members had to get haircuts every five days.
Before people collected autographs, they collected locks of celebrity hair.
A 2008 study found that people who smell roses while they're sleeping are more likely to have pleasant dreams.
Typically, humans spend about 3 months of their lives dreaming.
On average, humans experience smells and tastes in 15 percent of their dreams.
Sign-language users have been known to sign in their sleep while dreaming.
A British study found that eating different cheeses before bed influenced dreams. The most bizarre dreams came after eating blue cheese.
The number of people who say they dream in color has risen by 53% since the 1940s.
People who are born blind do not see in their dreams; they employ the other four senses. That's also true of most people who lost their sight before age seven. However, those who lost their sight after age seven do often see in their dreams.
“He dreams.” That's the literal translation of the Algonquin Indian word
powwaw
, which was a hallucinogen-enhanced religious gathering. (It's also where we got the word “powwow.”)
Children's dreams are shorter than adults' dreams. Good thing, too, because about 40% of childhood dreams are nightmares.
Fiction readers have more surreal dreams that most, but the types of dreams differ by genre: Fantasy fans have are often aware that they're dreaming. Romance novel readers' dreams are the most emotionally intense. And children who read scary books are more likely to have nightmares.
Men dream more frequently about roads; women dream more frequently of water.
Studies show that only 8% of dreams are about sex.
Scientists say that the higher your IQ, the more complex your dreams.
In the 1960s, astronauts trained for Moon voyages by walking on Hawaiian lava fields.
In many Western cultures, people see a man's face in the Moon's rock formations. But the Japanese see two rabbits making rice cakes. And the Chinese see one rabbit, pounding medicinal herbs for the moon goddess.
First manmade object to reach the Moon: the Soviet space probe
Luna 2
(1959).
There are still two golf balls on the Moon. Both were hit by astronaut Alan Shepard.
Astronauts have never visited the “dark side of the Moon,” the side facing away from the Sun. Temperatures there drop to â280°F, and space suits can't handle such extreme cold. (Heat they can handle, thoughâthe sunny side reaches 260°F.)
Astronauts have seen the Moon's dark side, though. On December 25, 1968, American astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders became the first humans to see it from their
Apollo 8
spacecraft.
If you weigh 150 pounds on Earth, you'd be only 25.5 pounds on the Moon.
The surface of the Moon has more than 30 trillion craters that are at least a foot wideâ¦and 500,000 that are at least a mile wide.
The Moon is only 1.25 light-seconds away from Earth, meaning it takes that long for its reflected light to reach us.
The Moon turns slowly in relation to the Sun, so one lunar day averages 27.3 Earth days.
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QUOTE ME
“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”
âMark Twain
If a monkey steals your ball while you're golfing in the kingdom of Tonga, there's no penalty for replacing it.
Rule #10 on the first list of golf rules, compiled in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1744: “If a ball be stopp'd by any person, horse, or dog, or anything else, the ball so stopp'd must be played where it lyes.”
On September 14, 1963, Floyd Satterlee Rood teed up a golf ball at the edge of the Pacific Ocean and drove it due east. An incredible 385 days, 114,737 strokes, and 3,511 lost balls later, he'd covered 3,397.7 miles before driving a final ball into the Atlantic Ocean.
At the Jinja Golf Course in Uganda, you can drop a ball at the nearest safe spot if your shot lands dangerously close to a crocodile.
There are typically between 360 and 523 dimples on a golf ball. Each measures about 0.01 inch deep.
In the game of ice golf, the cold temperatures reduce a ball's flight by about 30%. To give players a fighting chance, the tees in this icy game are relocated a third of the way up the fairway.
The floor of the Oval Office once bore scars from President Dwight Eisenhower's golf spikes.
Canada has more recreational golfers per capita than any other country, yet it took years for one of them to win the Masters tournament. Mike Weir in 2003 was the first.
Odds of making a hole in one: 1 in 12,500.