Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids (31 page)

DID YOU KNOW?

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's portrait is on the dime in part to honor the March of Dimes charity, an organization he helped to found in 1938 as a way of helping victims of polio. The FDR dime was released on January 30, 1946, nine months after the popular president's death and on what would have been his 64th birthday.

I Do…Do You?

In ancient tribal days, kidnapping a woman for a bride was considered an acceptable form of courtship. Groomsmen helped with the kidnapping and then prevented recapture by her clansmen.

Studies show: Married men change their underwear twice as often as single men.

The ancient Egyptians believed that the
vena amoris
(“vein of love”) ran directly from the heart to the fourth finger of the left hand. That's why people started wearing wedding rings on that finger.

Polls show that only 7 percent of married women trust their husbands to do the laundry correctly.

In 1928 (male) writer Evelyn Waugh married a woman named Evelyn Gardner. To avoid confusion, their friends called them “He-Evelyn Waugh” and “She-Evelyn Waugh.” Mercifully (for everyone but He-Evelyn), She-Evelyn solved the problem a year later by running off with another man.

Sweeping Changes

On June 8, 1869, Ives McGaffey patented the world's first suction vacuum cleaner—he called it the “Whirlwind.” It was a manual model—users had to turn a hand crank at the same time that they pushed it back and forth on the floor.

In 1907 a Canton, Ohio, janitor named James Spangler invented the first practical home vacuum cleaner as a way of reducing his asthma when cleaning carpets at his job. He used a broom handle as a rotary brush, an electric fan in a wooden soap box, and a pillowcase as a dust bag. Not having the capital to produce his vacuum for sale, he sold the patent to William Hoover, the husband of a family friend, who refined the externals of the design.

There's not really a “vacuum” in a vacuum cleaner. A vacuum is a space that's completely empty of anything, including air. To be more accurate, the appliance should be called a “suction cleaner.”

A typical vacuum cleaner reduces air pressure inside itself, making air from outside come rushing in (along with any dust or dirt that gets caught up in the draft).

There are about 15,000 vacuum cleaner–related accidents in the U.S. every year.

The rock group AC/DC got its name from the power info printed on the back of a vacuum cleaner.

Vacuuming for 92 minutes will burn off the calories in a 360-calorie blueberry muffin.

The Incas Said It First

At the end of the 15th century, the Incas spread the Quechua language throughout South America, and when Spanish explorers arrived, they helped to bring Quechuan words to the rest of the world. Here are some of the ones English borrowed.

Llama

Puma

Kinwa
: Quinoa

Kuntur
: Condor

Huanu
: Guano, meaning “dung”

Inka
: Inca, meaning “king” or “lord”

Ch'arki
: Jerky, meaning “dried flesh”

Kuka:
Coca/cocaine, meaning “coca plant”

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VIVE LA FRANCE!

The postrevolutionary French government introduced a metric clock with 10 hours per day—each consisting of 100 minutes of 100 seconds each. Forget “1 alligator, 2 alligator…” to count seconds. To count a metric second (2.4 regular seconds), you'd need to say, “1 alligator, elephant, and aardvark…” But workers who didn't want an eight-day workweek rebelled, and the idea of a metric clock was sent to the guillotine.

Fruit Flies

Male fruit flies deprived of females are more likely to drink alcohol.

Fruit flies are generally harmless to people—since they eat rotting fruit and don't seem to carry many human diseases—but some are dangerous to crops. The Asian fruit fly causes lots of damage to soft summer fruit crops like berries, peaches, and grapes.

Harvard University researchers started experimenting with fruit flies in 1901, and then Thomas Hunt Morgan of Columbia University was inspired to do the same. Over the next 30 years, Morgan and colleagues used what they learned to establish the basic foundation of genetics, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1933.

Today, about 7,500 scientists work with fruit flies to study fundamental issues of biology.

A fruit fly lives about 10 days at normal indoor temperature, seven days at 82°F.

Adults start mating 8 to 12 hours after emerging from the pupa. Females lay eggs in rotting fruit, up to 500 eggs a day, for up to 10 days.

In 2000 scientists sequenced and published the fruit fly's complete genome.

In the wild, fruit flies are yellow-brown with bright red eyes, but some lab-grown variations have brown or white eyes and dark bodies.

Fruit flies navigate using the earth's magnetic fields.

The common fruit fly originally came from western Africa. Researchers say they arrived in America about 500 years ago, possibly living on rotting fruit on slave ships.

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The U.S. shreds
7,000 tons of worn-out paper currency each year. Face value: about $10 billion.

It Happened on Christmas

Christmas Island was discovered and named (1643):
Captain William Mynors of the British East India Company stumbled on the island in the Indian Ocean and named it after the holiday.

The West Point Eggnog Riot (1826):
Seventy cadets at West Point, including Jefferson Davis, the future president of the Confederacy, engaged in a drunken riot on Christmas Day after large quantities of eggnog were smuggled into their barracks. The rioters made up a third of the student body, but only 20 were court-martialed. (Davis wasn't one of them.)

Pardoning of Confederates (1868):
Three years after the end of the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson granted an unconditional pardon to all Confederate soldiers.

The Japanese captured Hong Kong (1941):
The Japanese attacked Hong Kong on December 8, 1941, eight hours after they attacked Pearl Harbor. They conquered Hong Kong 17 days later, on December 25, and held the city until the war ended in 1945.

Apollo 8
orbited the moon (1968):
On Christmas Day,
Apollo 8
became the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon, look at the “dark side,” and see the sphere of Earth all at once.

Flagging Interest

Vexed by vexillology? No need—it's the study of flags.

The only nation with a plain, solid-colored flag was Libya. (It was green from 1977 to 2011.)

The official Olympic flag was first flown during the 1920 Games.

The X on the Confederate flag is called a St. Andrew's Cross. (It is also featured on the flag of Scotland and of the Russian navy.) It's based on the legend that St. Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross.

An ancient British designer laid the Scottish cross of St. Andrew over the British cross of St. George and created the Union Jack, adopted in 1606.

Napoleon designed Italy's national flag.

How many national flags have brown as their main color? None.

The maple leaf on the Canadian flag has 11 “points.” Actual maple leaves have 23.

In 2001, post-9/11 patriotism proved to be a boon for flag makers, and not just American ones. We bought 113 million foreign-made American flags, most of which came from China.

The state flag of Alaska shows the Big Dipper and was designed by 13-year-old Benny Benson, an Aleut boy from the small town of Chignik, Alaska, who won a contest in 1926.

Ohio's state flag is a pennant instead of a rectangle, the only state flag shaped that way.

For $13 to $24 (depending on size and fabric), your senator or representative will sell you an American flag with a certificate that says it has flown over the U.S. Capitol Building. It's a popular offer…which is why there are people whose job is to stand on the roof of the Capitol, zipping flag after flag up and down a flagpole all day.

Oregon's state flag is the only one with a different image on each side: the front side has the state seal, and the back a beaver.

First in Space!

First person to run the Boston Marathon while in space: NASA astronaut Sunita Williams aboard the International Space Station. She was an official participant, even though she ran on a treadmill. Her time: 4:23:10.

First monkey in space: Albert II, a rhesus monkey, on a U.S. rocket, 1949. He died, as did Albert III, IV, and V.

First monkey in space to survive: Miss Baker, a squirrel monkey, 1958. She lived another 26 years after landing. Her companion, Able, also survived the flight, but died three days later during an operation to remove an infected medical electrode that had been implanted for the flight.

First fatalities in space: Soviet astronauts Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov on June 29, 1971.

First haircut in space: American astronaut Paul Weitz got a trim from Pete Conrad in 1973.

First fish in space: A mummichog, 1973.

First e-mail from space: On August 28, 1991, from the crew of the space shuttle
Atlantis
.

First codger in space: John Glenn, age 77, on October 29, 1998. His space shuttle flight honored his first flight in 1962, when he became the fifth person in space and the first American to orbit Earth. Bonus fact: In 1962 the people of Perth, Australia, turned on their house, street, and car lights to greet John Glenn as he flew over them in the dark. In 1998 they did the same thing.

First video game advertisement from space: Astronaut Don Pettit catapulted stuffed birds at pigs in the International Space Station in 2012 to promote the Angry Birds in Space game, which had been created in cooperation with NASA.

First woman in space: Russian Valentina Tereshkova in 1963. (Sally Ride didn't become the first
American
woman in space until 20 years later.)

First cat in space: Felix, launched by the French in 1963.

Labor Relations

Today, only about 11 percent of U.S. workers belong to unions, as opposed to 35 percent in the 1950s.

On average, American teachers work more hours than teachers in any other country: 1,097 hours per year.

In September 1882, during America's gilded age when the rich were getting richer and their workers becoming poorer, machinist and labor union secretary Matthew Maguire organized a march in New York City to support unionization. Thousands of workers took an unpaid day off to join it, and an annual Labor Day tradition was born. It became an official federal holiday in 1894.

The earliest written record of an organized workers' strike occurred in 115 BC during the building of the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Rameses III. There was a lot of corruption in high places and continuing wars that drained the treasury. When the workers' rations and pay became overdue, they stopped working and marched, chanting, “We are hungry!” and other slogans. They eventually got their pay.

England's Big Ben

Although most people refer to London's famous and enormous clock tower as Big Ben, that name is really just for the 13-ton bell that chimes every hour. The chime was named after Benjamin Hall, the bell's commissioner. His name is also inscribed on the bell.

The tower is called Elizabeth Tower and was built in 1858. It's the third-tallest freestanding clock tower in the world, standing 16 stories high. It also holds the largest four-faced chiming clock in the world, suspended 180 feet above the ground.

Architect Augustus Pugin designed the tower as one of his last projects. Shortly after submitting the final design in February 1852, Pugin suffered a mental breakdown as a result of kidney disease and working too hard. He couldn't speak or recognize family members and friends, and he died in September of the same year.

The clock mechanism is kept accurate by a 660-pound pendulum. On the pendulum is a stack of old penny coins. If the clock is running slow, adding a penny will increase its speed by 0.4 seconds a day. Taking one away will decrease its speed by the same amount.

Thanks to slightly shifting soil, Elizabeth Tower leans 9 inches to the northwest.

You can climb to the top of the tower and be temporarily deafened by Big Ben, but only if you're a resident of the United Kingdom and are willing to put in a reservation four months in advance.

You also must be willing to climb the 334 limestone steps to the top. There is no elevator.

Each clock face is 23 feet across. The tip of each minute hand travels 72 feet an hour, 1,728 feet a day…for a total of 119.5 miles a year.

On August 20, 1949, Big Ben shocked London by chiming 4.5 minutes late. It turned out that hundreds of starlings had landed on the clock's minute hands, temporarily stopping the time.