Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (30 page)

There’s no medical treatment for tinnitus, ringing in the ears. On the bright side, it sometimes goes away all by itself.

Peppermint tea is the perfect remedy for everything from stomach upsets to ulcers.

Chewing on parsley or cardamom seeds will get rid of bad breath.

Experts say that a belly laugh can help relieve constipation.

It takes about 30 minutes for aspirin to find a headache.

GORILLA

First used in a Greek translation of 5th century B.C. Carthaginian explorer Hanno’s account of a voyage to West Africa. He reported encountering a tribe of wild hairy people, whose females were, according to a local interpreter, called gorillas. In 1847 the American missionary and scientist Thomas Savage adopted the word as the species name of the great ape and by the 1850s it had passed into general use. (
Dictionary of Word Origins
, by John Ayto)

FERRET

Ferret
comes from Latin
furritus
, for “little thief,” which probably alludes to the fact that ferrets, which are related to pole cats, like to steal hens’ eggs. Its name also developed into a verb, to ferret out, meaning “to dig out or bring something to light.” (
Cool Cats, Top Dogs, and Other Beastly Expressions
, by Christine Ammer)

SKUNK

Because the little striped mammal could squirt his foul yellow spray up to 12 feet, American Indians called him
segankw
or
segonku
, the Algonquin dialect word meaning simply “he who squirts.” Early pioneers corrupted the hard-to-pronounce Algonquin word to skunk, and that way it has remained ever since. (
Animal Crackers
, by Robert Hendrickson)

HOUND

Before the Norman conquest of England, French hunters bred a keen-nosed dog that they called the St. Hubert. One of their rulers, William, took a pack to England and hunted deer—following the dogs on foot. Saxons had never before seen a dog fierce enough to seize its prey, so they named William’s animals
hunts
, meaning “seizure.” Altered over time to
hound
, it was long applied to all hunting dogs. Then the meaning narrowed to stand for breeds that follow their quarry by scent. (
Why You Say It
, by Webb Garrison)

LEOPARD

It was once wrongly believed that the leopard was a cross between a “leo” (a lion) and a “pard” (a white panther)—hence the name “leopard.” (
Why Do We Say It?
, by Nigel Rees)

PYTHON

According to Greek legend, the god Apollo’s earliest adventure was the single-handed slaying of Python, a flame-breathing dragon who blocked his way to Pytho (now Delphi), the site he had chosen for an oracle. From the name of this monster derives the name of the large snake of Asia, Africa, and Australia, the python. (
Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun
, by Willard R. Espy)

CARDINAL

One would think that such an attractive creature would have given its name to many things, but in fact it is the other way around. The bird’s name comes from the red-robed official of the Roman Catholic Church, who in turn was named for being so important—that is, from the adjective
cardinal
, from the Latin
cardo
, meaning “hinge” or “pivot.” Anything cardinal was so important that events depended (hinged or pivoted) on it. (
It’s Raining Cats and Dogs
, by Christine Ammer)

MOOSE

Captain John Smith, one of the original leaders at Jamestown, wrote accounts of the colony and life in Virginia, in which he defined the creature as Moos, a beast bigger than a stagge. Moos was from Natick (Indian) dialect and probably derived from
moosu
, ‘he trims, he shaves,’ a reference to the way the animal rips the bark and lower branches from trees while feeding. (
The Chronology of Words and Phrases
, by Linda and Roger Flavell)

FLAMINGO

This long-legged pink wading bird is named for the people of Flanders, the Flemings, as they were called. Flemings were widely known for their lively personalities, their flushed complexions, and their love of bright clothing. Spaniard explorers in the New World thought it was a great joke naming the bird flamingo, which means “a Fleming” in Spanish. (
Facts On File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins
, by Robert Hendrickson)

He wasn’t blind, but Edison preferred reading in Braille.

Edison proposed to his second wife by Morse code.

In one four-year period, Edison obtained an average of one patent every five days.

In the 1860s Edison developed a device to electrocute cockroaches.

In 1888 Edison invented the talking doll.

Thomas Edison invented the light socket and the light switch.

The first sound recording ever made was “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” by Edison in 1877.

First sport on film: boxing (Edison filmed it in 1894).

The first thing Edison filmed with his movie camera was a person sneezing: “Record of a Sneeze” (1894).

If cooking bacon curls up in the pan, a new lover is about to arrive.

If the bubbles on the surface of a cup of coffee float toward the drinker,

prosperous times lie ahead; if they retreat, hard times are promised.

When a slice of buttered bread falls butter-side-up,

it means a visitor is coming.

Finding a chicken egg with no yolk is unlucky.

If meat shrinks in the pot, your downfall is assured.

If it swells, you’ll experience prosperity.

If your stomach didn’t produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks, it would digest itself.

Every day an adult body produces 300 billion new cells.

When your face blushes, the lining of your stomach turns red, too.

Nearly everyone’s right lung is bigger than their left lung.

A single isolated heart cell will “beat” for as long as it has a fresh supply of blood.

Side by side, 2,000 cells of the human body would cover about one square inch.

Your kidneys, weighing about five ounces each, process about 425 gallons of blood a day.

Your liver—the largest organ in your body—processes about a quart of blood a minute.

The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razor blades.

You’ll take about 23,000 breaths today.

You exhale air at an average speed of four miles per hour.

Your stomach has 35 million digestive glands.

Two percent of Americans have an extra nipple somewhere on their body.

Pain travels through your body at a rate of 350 feet per second.

The largest cell in the human body is a female egg. The smallest is a male sperm.

A full bladder is about the size of a softball.

Tendons, which anchor muscle tissue to bones, have half the tensile strength of steel.

You use about 200 muscles each time you take a step.

Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you’re standing still.

You can sweat as much as three gallons of water a day in a hot climate.

The thickest skin on your body is on your foot. It’s three times thicker than the skin on your palms.

Ichthyosis is the condition that gives human skin the appearance of fish scales.

The average person’s skin weighs twice as much as their brain.

The average person sheds 40 pounds of dead skin in their lifetime.

Technical term for goose bumps: horripilation.

Muscle cells live as long as you do. Skin cells live less than 24 hours.

In the old days, freckles were called moth-patches and were considered an affliction.

Draw a one-inch by one-inch square on your forehead. That square is home to 8 million bacteria.

Take your weight, multiply it by 0.6. That’s roughly how many pounds of water are in your body.

If you’re typical, your body contains about four ounces of salt.

You inhale about 700,000 of your own skin flakes daily.

Two years before he made his first flight, Wilbur Wright told friends, “man won’t fly for 50 years.”

The Wright brothers made four flights on December 17, 1903. The first was the shortest.

Charles Lindbergh carried a Felix the Cat doll with him on his famous flight.

Henry Ford was Charles Lindbergh’s first passenger in the
Spirit of St. Louis
.

Charles Lindbergh’s first words after his historic flight: “Are there any mechanics here?”

First pilot ever to fly a loop-the-loop: Lincoln Beachy, November 18, 1913, in San Diego.

On February 18, 1930, a cow flew in an airplane for the first time.

First animal to be ejected from a supersonic jet: a bear, in 1962. It parachuted safely to earth.

Castor oil is used as a lubricant in jet planes.

The higher a plane flies, the less fuel it uses.

Every year, more than 500,000 passengers are bumped from U.S. airlines due to overbooking.

Air Canada was the first North American airline to ban smoking.

Fourteen of the world’s 20 busiest airports are located in the United States.

In an average hour, there are 61,000 Americans airborne over the United States.

TAKING A STAND

Myth:
Custer’s Last Stand at Little Bighorn was a heroic effort by a great soldier.

Truth:
General George Armstrong Custer had unwarranted contempt for the American Indians’ fighting ability. His division was supposed to be a small part of a major attack led by General Alfred Terry, who was planning to meet Custer in two days with his troops. Custer was instructed to wait for Terry. Instead, he led his 266 men into battle. They were all slaughtered.

REPUTATION ON THE LINE

Myth:
Henry Ford invented the auto assembly line.

Truth:
No, chalk this one up to Ransom E. Olds, creator of the Oldsmobile. Olds introduced the moving assembly line in the early 1900s and boosted car production by 500 percent. The previous year the Olds Motor Vehicle Company had turned out 425 cars. The year after, they made more than 2,500 of them. Ford improved Olds’s system by introducing the conveyor belt, which moved both the cars and needed parts along the production line. The belt cut Ford’s production time from a day to about two hours. A significant contribution, but not the original.

WITCH HUNT

Myth:
Witches were burned at the stake during the Salem witch trials of 1692.

Truth:
No witches were ever burned in Salem. A hundred fifty men and women were arrested under suspicion of witchcraft. In all, 19 people and two dogs were put to death as “witches and warlocks,” all of them hanged except for one person, who was pressed to death by stones. Ten others were convicted, but not put to death. A few months later the governor of Massachusetts dissolved the witch court. The judges didn’t mind; they were running out of people to accuse.