Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wise Up! (24 page)
You can’t make snowballs at the South Pole…the snow is too dry.
The only still-growing glacier in the world is Argentina’s Perito Moreno.
On the scenic Icefields Parkway in Alberta, Canada, you can drive past three massive glaciers.
Antarctica’s only active volcano: Mount Erebus. Its only river: the Onyx.
Largest desert in the world: Antarctica. Technically, the definition of a desert is a place with little or no rainfall, so Antarctica, which receives almost no rain, is the world’s largest.
Man Eating Piranha Mistakenly Sold as Pet Fish
Smithsonian May Cancel Bombing of Japan Exhibits
A Reason for Odor Found at Sewer Plant
Man Accused of Shooting Neighbor, Dog Held for Trial
Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Experts Say
Utah Girl Does Well in Dog Shows
Arafat Swears in Cabinet
Lansing Residents Can Drop Off Trees
Poll Says 53 Percent Believe that Media Offen Makes Mistakes
Blind Woman Gets New Kidney from Dad She Hasn’t Seen in Years
Some Pieces of Rock Hudson Sold at Auction
Ninety percent of all animal species in history are now extinct.
The ancient Egyptians bought jewelry for their pet crocodiles.
Cats were first domesticated around 8000 BC.
Menoceras, a prehistoric rhinoceros that was the size of a pony, roamed America’s Midwest about 20 million years ago.
The last cow to be kept at the White House: Pauline, who belonged to William Howard Taft (1909–13).
Most dinosaurs walked on their toes.
In ancient Egypt, killing a cat was a capital offense.
Giraffes have seven vertebrae in their necks…the same as humans. Theirs are just much larger.
Some ferrets sleep so soundly that they won’t wake up even if you jostle them.
Napoléon’s favorite horse was a gray Arabian named Marengo.
Before lawn mowers, grazing sheep often kept golf courses trim. One course in Florida tried using goats, but it didn’t work—alligators ate them.
Giant pandas have evolved to eat mostly bamboo, but technically they’re carnivores.
Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the turkey, not the eagle, America’s national bird. He believed the bald eagle didn’t live its life “honestly” and considered the turkey a more “respectable” bird.
World’s largest frog: the goliath from Africa. It can grow to be 12 ½ inches long and weigh about seven pounds.
The Great Salt Lake is about eight times saltier than seawater.
Lake Mashu, Japan, has the world’s clearest water. It’s transparent to a depth of 136 feet.
Biggest source of pollution in Lake Ontario: Lake Erie.
Deepest lake in the United States: Crater Lake in Oregon, at 1,943 feet.
Lake Huron’s Manitoulin Island is the largest island in a freshwater lake.
Minnesota has 201 lakes named Mud, 154 named Long, and 123 named Rice.
Texas has just one natural lake—Caddo Lake— and 190 man-made lakes and reservoirs.
The largest underground lake in the United States: the Lost Sea in (or under) Sweetwater, Tennessee.
Largest aquifer in the United States: the Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains, which covers more than 170,000 square miles in eight states.
There are about 3 million lakes in Canada.
Frank Sinatra showered four times a day.
King George III once referred to Benjamin Franklin as an “evil genius.”
Napoléon Bonaparte was afraid of cats.
Lou Gehrig’s only film role was as himself—a former baseball player turned rancher in the movie
Rawhide
.
Kevin Spacey initially wanted to be a stand-up comic.
Artist Paul Gauguin worked on the Panama Canal in 1887.
Robin Williams grew up in a 30-room mansion in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Early job for French actor Gerard Depardieu: door-to-door soap salesman.
Shirley Temple failed a screen test for the
Our Gang
movie comedies.
Bob Hope was jailed as a youth for stealing tennis balls.
Since it first went on the air in 1975,
Wheel of Fortune
has given away more than $180 million in cash and prizes.
On average, Vanna White claps her hands 720 times per episode.
First letter White turned on the show’s puzzle board: T.
Wheel of Fortune
’s wheel weighs about 4,000 pounds.
Of the more than 3,000 people who try out, fewer than 500 make it onto the show.
Biggest winner: in 2008, New Jersey’s Michelle Loewenstein won $1,026,080.
Inspiration for the show’s puzzle board: the children’s game Hangman.
Host Pat Sajak served in the army during Vietnam, where he worked on a military radio show in Saigon. He replaced Adrian Cronour who famously started each day’s program with “Good morning, Vietnam!”
Wheel of Fortune
is the longest-running syndicated show in television history.
W. C. Fields was the first choice for the Wizard in
The Wizard of Oz
.
Kate Hudson was originally cast as William’s sister in
Almost Famous
(2000). She took over the Penny Lane role when Sarah Polley dropped out of the film.
Meryl Streep’s role in
Out of Africa
(1985) was first offered to Audrey Hepburn.
Harrison Ford turned down the lead role in
Jurassic Park
.
Uma Thurman originally turned down the role of Mia in
Pulp Fiction
(1994). Director Quentin Tarantino persuaded her by reading the script to her over the phone.
The roles played by Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger in
Jerry Maguire
were originally written for Tom Hanks and Winona Ryder.
One actor considered for the Don Corleone role in
The Godfather
: Laurence Olivier.
Chris O’Donnell was offered Will Smith’s role in
Men in Black
, but turned it down.
The first choices for leads in
The African Queen
were John Mills and Bette Davis.
Director David Lean wanted Albert Finney for the lead in
Lawrence of Arabia
, but Katharine Hepburn urged the producer to cast Peter O’Toole instead.
Eddie Murphy’s role in
Beverly Hills Cop
(1984) was originally written for Sylvester Stallone.
Marie Osmond turned down the female lead (Sandy) in
Grease
.
Mel Gibson and Tim Curry both auditioned for the role of Mozart in
Amadeus
(1984).
According to studies, the primary cause of depression in married people is being married. In unmarried people, it’s being single.
Forty million Americans use online dating services.
Forty percent of American women say they have asked a man out on a date. (And 93 percent of them got a “yes.”)
A third of all pet owners admit to having more photos of their pet than of their spouse.
The U.S. divorce rate has dropped almost every year since 1979.
About 80 percent of the talking you do each day is to yourself.
Thirty-five percent of parents play video games with their kids. Of those parents, 47 percent are women.
On average, people stand 14 inches apart when having a conversation.
The three most common fears among American adults: spiders, social situations, and flying.
The St. Louis grocer who created Log Cabin syrup named it in honor of Abe Lincoln’s first home.
In Italian,
muscatel
means “wine with flies in it.”
The French name for potato:
pomme de terre
, or “apple of the earth.”
James H. Salisbury, an American doctor who advocated eating red meat, gave his name to the Salisbury steak.
The Big Dipper constellation is known as “the Casserole” in France.
Pretzels that have no salt on them are called “baldies.”
Mrs. Smith of pie fame was actually a Pennsylvania woman named Amanda Smith who supported her family by cooking pies.
The lollipop was named in 1908 by George Smith after a popular racehorse, Lolly Pop.
Burrito
is Spanish for “little donkey.”
In 2007, British marine biologists discovered the oldest living animal, a clam more than 400 years old.
The longest recorded flight of a chicken: 13 seconds.
Of the world’s 10 deadliest snakes, seven live in Australia. But only about four people die of snakebites there each year.
According to scientists: the five smartest primates after humans are orangutans, chimpanzees, spider monkeys, gorillas, and surilis.
Rats can go without water longer than camels can.
The most endangered mammal in the United States: the black-footed ferret. It’s also the only ferret species native to the region.
Longest flying-squirrel flight on record: 2.5 miles.
By the age of 15, most tuna have swum more than a million miles.
As a species, the platypus is 150 million years old. (Humans are about 200,000 years old.)
Gray whales make the longest annual migration of any mammal…12,000 miles round-trip.
Domestic cats thrive in more places on earth than any other mammal species besides humans.
North America has the greatest diversity of freshwater mussels in the world—297 species.
Alpaca wool comes in 22 natural colors—the most color variety of any wool-bearing animal.
In 2004, an English mastiff named Tia gave birth to a world-record 24 puppies in one litter.
Sandra Dee…Alexandra Cymbliak Zuck
Roy Rogers…Leonard Franklin Slye
Boris Karloff…William Henry Pratt
Demi Moore…Demetria Guynes
Sade…Helen Folassade Adu
Johnny Cash…J. R. Cash
Jane Seymour…Joyce Frankenberg
Minnesota Fats…Rudolf Wanderone
Audrey Hepburn…Edda Kathleen van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston
Albert Brooks…Albert Lawrence Einstein
Whoopi Goldberg…Caryn Elaine Johnson
Michael Caine…Maurice Joseph Mickelwhite
* * *
“My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met.”
—Henny Youngman
Jacopo Peri’s
Dafne
, composed in 1594, was the first Italian opera.
“Here Comes the Bride,” from Richard Wagner’s 1850 opera
Lohengrin
, was first used as a wedding march during the Civil War.
The 1957 Bugs Bunny cartoon
What’s Opera, Doc?
adapted music from Wagner’s operas.
The female lead in an opera is the
prima donna
. The male lead is the
primo uomo
.
Giuseppe Verdi’s opera
Aida
premiered in Cairo, Egypt, in 1871 to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal two years earlier.
In 1955, Marian Anderson became the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
In
Pretty Woman
(1990), the opera Richard Gere takes Julia Roberts to is
La Traviata
… which is about a prostitute who falls for a wealthy man.
Record number of curtain calls after an opera performance: Luciano Pavarotti, with 165.
THE NU’UANU PALI LOOKOUT
Today, this is a tourist attraction overlooking the northeastern coast of Oahu, but in 1795, it was the site of one of the deadliest battles in Hawaii’s history. That year, King Kamehameha I, who became one of the islands’ most powerful rulers, had nearly completed his quest to unite the islands’ various tribes under one king. He’d already conquered several other islands, and only Oahu stood in his way. So he gathered 10,000 soldiers and attacked the island’s chief. As the battle raged, the fighting spread into the mountains and Kamehameha’s army gained ground. Finally, his soldiers trapped their enemies on a cliff atop the Nu’uanu Pali, a pass through the mountains. Kamehameha pressed on, eventually driving hundreds of enemy soldiers over the cliff—a 1,000-foot plunge to their deaths. Eventually, the leader of Oahu surrendered, and soon after, Kamehameha seized power and became the first official monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
In the years that followed, rumors about the pass being haunted began circulating. The Hawaiians already observed many superstitions: They didn’t carry pork over the pass, because they believed the fire goddess Pele, who lived on the eastern side of the mountains, didn’t approve. (She was in an ongoing battle with a half-man, half-pig god.) In another story, a lizardlike creature that could take the form of a beautiful woman would lure men into the mountains and kill them. Finally, during the 1800s, men building a road through the pass found several hundred skulls, believed to be the remains of Kamehameha’s enemies. That just fueled the legends, and today, locals aren’t surprised when tourists report hearing whispers and cries in the fierce winds atop the Pali lookout.
THE PU-U O MAHUKA HEIAU
This particular site on Oahu’s North Shore was one of Hawaii’s largest and most sacred heiaus, or religious temples. It was a place
where tribal chiefs held important meetings, their wives gave birth, and their subjects sacrificed humans to the gods.
Supposedly, the heiau is also in the path of a group of mythical apparitions called the Night Marchers. They look like ancient warriors, carry shields and weapons, and pound on battle drums. No one’s sure where they’re headed or what they’re looking for, but locals and tourists who visit the heiau’s ruins after dark have reported seeing footprints in the sand and hearing drumbeats and chants in the distance. Fortunately, according to legend, as long as human interlopers don’t interrupt a night march or make eye contact with one of the ghosts, they won’t be harmed.