Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! (13 page)

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s three favorite foods: frog legs, pig knuckles, and scrambled eggs.

To help curb his appetite, John Adams ate boiled cornmeal pudding before a meal.

James Buchanan liked to host parties featuring sauerkraut and mashed potatoes.

Lyndon B. Johnson’s favorite foods were canned green peas and tapioca.

Guests at Ronald Reagan’s 1980 inaugural parties consumed 40 million jelly beans.

Thomas Jefferson ate meat only “as a condiment to the vegetables which constitute my principal diet.”

George Washington loved cream of peanut soup and crabmeat soup. His favorite drink was eggnog.

For lunch, George W. Bush liked to eat grilled cheese sandwiches made with white bread and American cheese.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a skilled chef, famous for his vegetable soup, steaks, and cornmeal pancakes.

Franklin D. Roosevelt created a cocktail of rum, brown sugar, and orange juice. He called it “my Haitian libation.”

Thomas Jefferson once ate a tomato in public to prove it wasn’t poisonous.

Ewww…Insects

Statistically, you’re more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a spider bite.

At an exhibition golf match in South Africa, a swarm of killer bees chased Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player off the green.

The network logo lurking in the corner of your TV screen is called a “bug.”

Honeybees kill more people every year than all the world’s poisonous snakes combined.

World’s biggest bug: the Goliath beetle can grow to be 4 ½ inches long.

Ladybugs aren’t bugs—they’re beetles. Their official name: ladybird beetles.

The body of a cockroach can live for nine days without its head. (That’s the same amount of time a cockroach can live without eating.)

*    *    *

Another kind of insect?
The Volkswagen Beetle was first developed in Germany in 1933. Adolf Hitler wanted a cheap car that regular people could afford. In German,
Volkswagen
means “people’s car.”

Censored

Released in 1965,
Doctor Zhivago
wasn’t shown in Russia until 1994.

“Sweetheart of the Month” in the December 1953 debut issue of
Playboy
: Marilyn Monroe. (A “Sweetheart” is better known today as a “Playmate.”)

First R-rated film made by the Disney-owned Touchstone studio:
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
.

A 1946 FBI memo denounced the movie
It’s a Wonderful Life
as communist propaganda.

Ronnie James Dio popularized the “devil horns” hand gesture now associated with heavy metal. It was originally an ancient Greek vulgarity called the
mano cornuta
.

William Randolph Hearst wouldn’t allow any of his newspapers to run ads for
Citizen Kane
.

In 1945, the liquor industry offered director Billy Wilder $5 million not to release
The Lost Weekend
, which mentions alcoholism and a possible affair between two men. Wilder refused.

In 1967,
The Ed Sullivan Show
made the Rolling Stones change “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together.”

Buster Keaton’s MGM contract stipulated that he was not to smile in public.

P. T. Barnum was once jailed for libel when he was a newspaper editor.

*    *    *

Making Faces:
There are six universally recognized facial expressions: happiness, disgust, fear, sadness, anger, and surprise.

Soap

The first soap makers appeared in Babylon around 2800 BC.

The pumice in Lava soap was originally imported from the Italian island of Lipari.

1n 1933, Procter & Gamble debuted its first radio serial, a 15-minute daytime drama called
Oxydol’s Own Ma Perkins
, about the life and trials of a woman who owned a lumberyard in the South. (Oxydol was a popular laundry detergent of the day.) The show was so successful that, by 1939, Procter & Gamble’s soap products were sponsoring 21 daytime dramas for radio. These shows came to be known as “soap operas.”

Most stylists don’t recommend using soap to shampoo hair. Why? Soaps are made with an alkaline solution that damages hair over time. Soap can also react with other hair products and produce a layer of “scum” that makes hair look dull.

In Europe during the 19th century, taxes on soap were very high—it was considered a luxury item, and average people couldn’t afford it.

An Ohio company called the Stinky Bomb makes a soap in the shape of a hand grenade. It comes in three colors: black, army green, and pale pink.

Words & Language

The word “dream” didn’t come to mean “sleep images” until the 13th century. In Old English, it meant “music,” “joy,” or “noise.”

The Epic of Gilgamesh
, the world’s oldest known poem, dates to around the third century BC.

The Sumerians invented cuneiform (picture writing) around 3500 BC.

René Descartes introduced the terms “real number” and “imaginary number” to mathematics.

The word “electric” was first used in 1600 by William Gilbert, Queen Elizabeth I’s doctor.

“Booby prize” comes from the German
bubenpreis
, which means “boy’s prize.”

Italic type dates back to 1500.

In poker, a flush in the suit of clubs is called a “golf bag.”

Sports announcer Halsey Hall was the first to say “Holy cow!” during a broadcast.

The ampersand (&) was once considered a letter of the English alphabet.

According to some scholars there was no punctuation in the English language until the 15th century

The Chinese character for “money” originally meant “cowrie shell.”

The first typewriters typed only in capital letters. The shift key wasn’t invented until 1878.

Kamikaze
, the name adopted by World War II Japanese suicide pilots, means “divine wind.”

The word
tejas
, which became Texas, is the Spanish spelling of
taysha
, an American Indian word that means “friend” or “ally.”

Dear Dairy

Milk is used to manufacture glue, paint, and some plastics.

According to experts, the food that people are most likely to crave is cheese.

Number-one consumer of cow’s milk worldwide (besides cows): Finland.

For the Beatles’ first U.S. tour, Baskin-Robbins created an ice cream flavor called Beatle Nut.

Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne’s favorite cheese: Roquefort.

You can make edible cheese from the milk of 24 different mammals.

Ben and Jerry’s mourned Jerry Garcia’s death by putting black cherries in their Cherry Garcia ice cream.

The word “galaxy” comes from the Greek
gala
, meaning “milk.”

People on the U.S. eastern seaboard consume almost 50 percent of all ice cream sandwiches worldwide.

People who really, really love cheese are called turophiles.

In England, it was once a custom to pass a newborn baby through a cheese rind.

In Spain, many people pour chocolate milk on breakfast cereal.

In 1957, Americans ate more margarine than butter for the first time.

Robert Frost used to milk cows on his farm late at night to avoid having to do it early in the morning.

Hanson, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Tony Bennett have all worn “mustaches” in “Got Milk?” ads.

Baskin-Robbins once made a ketchup-flavored ice cream.

Instruments

Earliest keyboard instruments: the pipe organ, the clavichord, and the harpsichord.

The United States has more bagpipe bands than Scotland does.

According to violin bow makers, white horsehair produces a smoother sound than black horsehair.

Up until the 1800s, the triangle had jingling rings strung on it.

The predecessor to the trombone was called the sackbut.

What are the qanun, nay, mijwiz, buzuq, and daff? They’re all Middle Eastern musical instruments.

What instrument has a head, a flange, a tension hoop, and an armrest? The banjo.

A concert harp has 47 strings.

The heckelphone, musette, and piffaro are all rare members of the oboe family.

Saxophones, invented in 1840, did not become popular until the rise of jazz in the 1920s.

BIG Business

First company to earn $1 billion in one year: General Motors, in 1955.

Largest industry in Nashville: health care, at $18.3 billion annually. Music is second, at $6.1 billion.

Worldwide, enough Coca-Cola is consumed every year to fill 3.5 million bathtubs.

The Ford Motor Company was the first to offer a rebate…$50 cash back on a new Model T.

Nabisco produces about 16 billion Oreo cookies a year at its Chicago factory alone.

Pop-Tarts are the most popular product made by Kellogg’s, with more than two billion sold each year.

Number of Starbucks in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport as of 2009: 15.

Pizza Hut uses 525 million pounds of tomatoes every year.

Popular items at McDonald’s in India: the Maharaja Mac and the McAloo Tikki.

There are more than 300 different types of fast-food chains in the United States.

Mississippi’s largest industry is catfish; 150,000 tons are produced each year.

Wal-Mart’s annual income is nearly equal to that of Russia.

Loch Ness Monster tourism adds $40 million a year to Scotland’s economy.

The busiest Pizza Hut in the world is in Paris, France.

Fantasy sports is a $3.5-billion-a-year industry in the United States.

Say It in Quotes

Thomas Jefferson read in seven languages and made it a rule “never to read translations where I can read the original.”

Harry S. Truman didn’t think much of polls. He once said, “I wonder how far Moses would have gotten if he’d taken a poll in Egypt?”

George W. Bush said, “I never dreamed about being president…when I was growing up, I wanted to be Willie Mays.”

During World War II, sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage.”

When told that General Ulysses S. Grant drank too much whiskey, President Abraham Lincoln reportedly replied, “Find out the name of the brand so I can give it to my other generals.”

Andrew Jackson once described the presidency as “dignified slavery.”

The phrase “weapons of mass destruction” was coined in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War in reference to air bombing.

Thomas Jefferson said that, over a 50-year period, the sun “never caught him in bed.”

There is no record of Patrick Henry actually saying, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

In 1988, former baseball player Bill “Spaceman” Lee ran for president. Slogan: “No guns. No butter. Both can kill.”

“No two men can differ on a principle of trigonometry,” said Thomas Jefferson.

Harry S. Truman on religious differences: “It has caused more wars and feuds than money.”

Morphine addiction became known as the “soldier’s disease” after the Civil War.

Kid Stats

On average, kids touch their mouths with their hands once every three minutes.

Fifty-four percent of American kids ride the bus to school.

Sixty-five percent of children have an imaginary friend before the age of seven.

Eighty-four percent of American children read with their parents every day.

U.S. parents spend about 38 minutes a week in “meaningful conversation” with their kids.

Sixty-three percent of American teenagers have their own cell phone.

A typical American kid spends 18 percent of his or her day in front of a TV or computer screen.

Sixty-one percent of American parents of children over eight do not establish TV-watching rules.

Seventy-one percent of kids who play Internet games say the virtual worlds they visit online are “very important” to them.

Hair It Is

The ancient Assyrians cut their hair into the shape of a pyramid.

What does author Bram Stoker’s title character in
Dracula
have that most movie Draculas don’t? A mustache.

The amount of lather shampoo produces has little to do with its cleaning ability.

Famous redhead Lucille Ball actually had brown hair.

Most wig changes in a movie: 35, by Angela Bassett in
What’s Love Got to Do with It?

The ancient Romans thought unibrows were sexy.

Some shampoos contain formaldehyde.

Walt Disney first started drawing cartoons in exchange for free haircuts.

The tall wigs worn by British judges are called
perukes
.

Cleopatra used a mixture of horse teeth, bear grease, burned mice, and deer marrow in an attempt to cure Julius Caesar’s baldness.

Doubles

Eighty Eight, Kentucky, was named by a man who had 88 cents in his pocket on the day he founded the town.

What do 11 and 88 have in common? They both read the same upside down.

Baseball player Bill Voiselle, who was from a South Carolina town called Ninety Six, wore the number 96 on his uniform.

The right-field wall at PNC Park in Pittsburgh is 21 feet high…a tribute to Roberto Clemente, who wore number 21.

From 1971 to 1974, the UCLA men’s basketball team won 88 straight games.

The novel
Catch-22
was originally titled
Catch-18
.

Prince’s song “7” made it to number 7 on the pop charts.

Real headline on a newspaper article about a golf tournament: “Shot Off Woman’s Leg Helps Nicklaus to 66.”

Stephen Foster, composer of “Camptown Races,” died with 38 cents in his pocket…when he was 38.

First tabloid: The
Illustrated Daily News
(now the
Daily News
), published in New York City in 1919.

Matthew Webb was the first person to swim the English Channel in 1875. It took about 22 hours.