Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids (19 page)

HORSES

Impact:
Pre-industrial power and transportation, Mongol invasions

People began domesticating horses about 6,000 years ago, and long before the Industrial Revolution, humans discovered that the animals made great workers and companions. The Mongols were master horsemen who, during the 13th century, ruled the largest empire in history, containing 100 million people and 22 percent of the world's total landmass, stretching from Hungary to the Sea of Japan. Mongol soldiers often rode for hours without stopping, drinking blood from their horses as they conquered new lands. Over time, horses became inextricably linked to humans, providing transportation, power, and even tail hair for violin bows and an estrogen supplement called Premarin, whose name honors its source material: “
pre
gnant
mar
e ur
in
e.”

AMERICAN BISON

Impact:
Native American settlement of the Great Plains; American roads; consciousness about saving endangered species

Massive bison herds, numbering up to 30 million animals, once grazed the grassy plains between the Rockies and the Appalachians, from the far north of Canada to Mexico. Native Americans used their migration paths as transportation routes that became road and rail beds still used today. And for thousands of years, Native Americans survived on the grassy North American plains by hunting the bison. But then came Europeans.

When white settlers arrived in North America, they were amazed by the number of bison, a seemingly endless supply, and began shooting them for skins or sport, usually leaving the meat to rot in the sun. There are also reports that wholesale bison slaughter was a deliberate tactic to deprive the Plains Indians of their main food source.

By 1889 the American bison population was down to just 1,091 animals. When the government shrugged off that fact, a few prescient ranchers saved a handful of the remaining animals, breeding them for eventual reintroduction into the wild. Those bison now make up the populations of Yellowstone National Park and Canada's Elk Island Park. The ranchers' success inspired attempts to save other endangered species through laws, hunting bans, and captive breeding programs that release animals into the wild.

BEAVERS

Impact:
European exploration of North America, destruction of Native American tribes

Like the American bison, beavers were also nearly wiped out for their fur. In the 1700s, 60 to 80 beavers populated every mile of every stream in Canada and the northern United States. But within 100 years, the critters were hunted to near extinction. Why? Because beaver-skin top hats were all the rage in England. Fur traders had finished off the European beavers, so they went searching for the animals in other British holdings. They discovered a vast beaver population in North America that, in the 1790s, allowed them to ship more than 30,000 pelts a year back to Europe. As the beavers along the American East Coast disappeared, fur trappers explored farther west, following the Great Lakes and continuing in all directions. In 1793 Alexander Mackenzie, the first European to travel across the North American continent, did so on behalf of the North West Fur Company.

For Native Americans, beaver-mania was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they could exchange furs for many goods they needed. But on the other, waves of European interlopers were infringing on their lands. Worse, the diseases the explorers brought were disastrous to many tribes, wiping out most or all of the inhabitants of some villages.

Fortunately, in the mid-1800s, beavers got a reprieve. Silk hats slowly gained favor, leaving the few remaining beavers in North America alone long enough to repopulate.

Shark Treatment

Sharks evolved 200 million years before dinosaurs.

If they're so old, why don't scientists ever find any fossilized shark bones? Because sharks don't have bones—their bodies are supported by cartilage, which doesn't fossilize. Scientists have found many ancient shark teeth, however.

The older the shark, the larger its teeth.

Sharks can hear lower frequencies than humans can, but humans can hear higher frequencies than sharks can.

A shark vomits by thrusting its stomach out of its mouth…and then pulling it back in.

The spined pygmy shark grows to be just 6 inches long.

Measuring up to 50 feet long, the whale shark is the largest fish in the world.

Sharks have no swim bladder (a gas-filled organ that keeps fish buoyant), so they have to swim constantly to stay afloat.

The largest great white shark ever caught was 21 feet long and weighed 7,000 pounds.

When a sea turtle eats a Portuguese man o' war, the jellyfish-like creature gets its revenge. It gives off a scent that attracts sharks…which then come eat the sea turtle.

The lemon shark grows about 24,000 new teeth every year.

Great white sharks can swim at up to 25 mph.

Shark attacks are extremely rare: fewer than 100 a year worldwide, with only 5 to 15 fatalities. In fact, in a typical year, more people are killed by pigs than sharks.

But…nearly 90 percent of shark attack victims are men.

Speak Up!

A young, struggling Walt Disney originally performed the voice of Mickey Mouse himself to save money on production costs. Bill Scott, cocreator of
Rocky and Bullwinkle
, likewise did the voices of Mr. Peabody and Bullwinkle.

Dan Castellaneta's contract with Fox forbids him from doing Homer Simpson's voice in public.

The first voice ever recorded was Thomas Edison in 1877, when he was messing around with his new invention, the phonograph. The historic first recording? “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

Australia's crested bellbird has an odd defense mechanism: It can throw its voice like a ventriloquist.

Your vocal cords vibrate to create the sound of your voice. If you're an average adult, they vibrate 100 (usually male) to 200 (usually female) times a second. A child's, 250 to 400. And a screaming baby, 500.

The vocal cords of a soprano, singing two octaves above middle C, vibrate 1,024 times a second.

To do Smokey Bear's deep voice in commercials, voice man Jack Weaver put his head in a trash can.

Lloyd's of London once insured Bruce Springsteen's voice for £3.5 million.

In
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
, Dopey makes just a handful of sounds during the entire movie: hiccups and snoring, rendered flawlessly by Disney sound man Jimmy MacDonald.

Like most of his audience, even author E. B. White became teary-eyed by the death of his fictional spider Charlotte. When he recorded the audiobook, it took 19 takes before he could read that part without his voice cracking.

Hank Azaria has voiced more than 160 characters on
The Simpsons
.

The Sailing Solution

At the latitude 60° south, it is possible to sail around the world without ever reaching land.

Popeye the Sailor is 5'6".

Before it was used for buildings, the “skyscraper” is what sailors called the uppermost sail on a ship.

On a sailboat, “faffle” is the flapping of a sail when you turn too much into the wind.

In ancient Greek, “astronaut” means “star sailor.”

Minnesota, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” is an understatement: The state actually has 11,842 lakes, which may explain why it has one recreational boat for every six people.

Legend claims that the term “hooker” came from “working” women who followed the camps of Civil War general Joseph Hooker, but that's not true. Sailors popularized the term 20 years earlier when discussing Corlear's Hook, a scandalous dockside area of New York City.

What's the difference between a boat and a ship? According to the U.S. Navy, it's a matter of scale: a boat is “a vessel that can be hauled aboard a ship.”

A “fathom” was the distance that a sailor could reach from fingertip to fingertip with arms fully extended as if about to give a hug. And that's where the word came from: in Old English,
fathom
meant “embrace.”

“Saint Elmo's fire” is a steady discharge of electricity emitted when electrified clouds meet the masts of sailing ships. (“Elmo” is a nickname for Erasmus, patron saint of Mediterranean sailors.)

First known sailing vessel: A pine dugout from the Netherlands that dates from 8040 BC.

The story of Robinson Crusoe was based on a quarrelsome sailor named Alexander Selkirk. After unending conflict with a captain, Selkirk asked to be marooned on a nearby deserted island, where he lived for four years and four months before being rescued.

One Hump or Two?

The camel is vital to the desert Bedouins, who call it
Ata Allah
(“God's gift”).

Many camels chew in a figure-eight pattern.

A
bukht
is the result when you mate a one-humped camel with a two-humped camel. A bukht splits the difference between its parents and sports one elongated hump.

Camels will often refuse to carry an unbalanced load.

Riding a camel takes a lot of moving, shifting, and leaning. The gym on the
Titanic
included a mechanical one for the benefit of travelers going on to the Middle East.

Camels can drink up to seven gallons of water per minute.

During warm weather, camels shed about five pounds of fur, what was their winter coat.

Route 66 westbound out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, began as a camel trail in the 1800s when the army was testing the animals for desert warfare.

It's best not to tick off a camel. When angry, they spit a mixture of saliva and regurgitated stomach bile.

A Flock of Facts

The 225 species of pigeons and doves are the same bird group. Whether a particular species has been named a pigeon or a dove seems to have to do with size—smaller species (some as small as sparrows) are more often called “doves” and the larger ones (some as large as turkeys), “pigeons.”

Rock pigeons are the ones we think of as urban pigeons. Their adaptation to buildings and window ledges is not that big a change for them: in the wild, they live on cliffs and rock ledges.

Homing pigeons are just rock pigeons that have been bred for specific characteristics.

The phrase “stool pigeon” (someone who acts as an informant for the police) comes from the term “stall,” which was the 15th-century British name for a captive pigeon used to lure hawks into a trap.

In 1963 a court in Libya convicted 75 “smugglers” and sentenced them to death. (The defendants were all pigeons.)

A “silver pigeon” can be a vintage motor scooter, a tropical fish, an architecture award, or a hunting shotgun, but it's not actually a bird.

The U.S. Coast Guard began using search-and-rescue pigeons in 1977. Success rate over the ocean: 93 percent. Human success rates (even after seeing the pigeons respond): only 38 percent. Still, budget cuts killed the program in 1983.

Estimated number of New York City pigeons captured and sold to shooting clubs each year: 144,000. In annual pigeon shoots, up to 15,000 are released over three days and shot for fun and prizes.

On September 1, 1914, the passenger pigeon went extinct when Martha, the last known surviving bird, died in the Cincinnati Zoo. The once-abundant, slow-flying birds were an easy target for sport shooters.

The Northern Lights can impair pigeons' navigating abilities.

Rearguard

Although the idea didn't immediately catch on, American Joseph Gayetty invented modern toilet paper in 1857…and printed his name on every sheet.

The very first toilet paper of any kind has been traced back to China in the late 6th century. Back then, scrap paper was crumpled repeatedly to soften it, but not just any paper would do. Wrote artist Yan Zhitui in AD 589: “Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the Five Classics or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes.”

Most households have eight toilet paper rolls in reserve to avoid running out.

The average bathroom visitor uses 8.6 sheets of toilet paper per visit, 57 sheets a day, for a total of 20,805 sheets per year.

On average, an American family of four uses two trees' worth of toilet paper every year.

Ever wonder how they wind toilet paper so neatly on cardboard tubes? They don't. They wind wide rolls of paper around long tubes, and then slice them into small rolls.

Lost in Space

All of our solar system's giant outer planets have rings: Saturn has 23, Uranus has 13, Neptune has 9, and Jupiter has 3. Saturn's are so bright that they were discovered almost 350 years ago. The other planets' rings are too dim to be seen with primitive telescopes and weren't discovered until the 1970s.

According to scientists, Saturn's rings will probably drift into space and disappear eventually.

The only planet whose name comes from Greek mythology is Uranus. (The rest are Roman.)

The dwarf planet Pluto was named in 1930 by Venetia Burney, an 11-year-old British schoolgirl.