Uncle John’s Did You Know? (13 page)
Read Uncle John’s Did You Know? Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
• Why do vegetables get soggy when they’re overcooked? The cellulose in their cell walls (which normally keeps them rigid) softens when it’s heated.
• What makes food turn golden brown when it’s cooked in a frying pan? “Browning” is what happens naturally when the sugar molecules and the amino acids in the food are heated together.
• The ancient Romans were the first to celebrate January 1 as New Year’s Day. When? In 153 B.C.
• There was no year 0.
• Luckily, there can never be more than three Friday the 13ths in one year.
• What’s the only month that’s also a verb? March!
• September 23, 2006, marked the beginning of the year 5767 in the Jewish calendar.
• The Chinese solar calendar is divided into 24 segments of 15 days each. The third month, beginning in early March, is known as the month of the Excited Insects. July is divided into two months known as Slight Heat and Great Heat.
• A year is the amount of time it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun. So, if you’re 10 years old, you’ve traveled around the Sun 10 times! (It’s not exactly a year: A year is 365 days—a revolution around the Sun takes 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds.)
• Brazilians consider August an unlucky month.
• “Kalpa” is a Hindu measurement of time. It’s also the world’s longest measurement of time—432 billion years.
• The oldest cat on record lived to be 34. But one goldfish outlived it, logging in a record life span of 41 years.
• To figure out a dog’s age in human years, count the first dog year as 15 years, the second as 10 years, and all the following years as 3 years. So a 6-year-old dog would be: 15+10+3+3+3+3 = 37 human years old.
• An aardvark’s tongue is about 17 inches long.
• There are 103 different species of crow.
• An oyster can survive out of water for as long as four months.
• Natural llama hair comes in 22 different colors.
• What a hog: A pig’s stomach can hold 32 pints—that’s four gallons—of food and drink.
• Ospreys (a.k.a. seahawks) have been clocked at 80 miles per hour.
• Ants can survive underwater for as long as 14 days.
• On a good day, a hummingbird may visit 2,000 flowers before he get his fill of nectar.
• The chickens of the world lay two billion eggs a day, which, by the way, would make an omelet as big as the island of Cyprus—3,500 square miles.
• The word
conquistador
is Spanish for “conqueror.”
• The Vikings’ favorite weapons? Catapults and battering rams.
• We get the word “vandalism” from the Vandals, a European tribe that completely destroyed Rome in the 5th century A.D.
• 1,200 Japanese kamikaze pilots died sinking 34 American ships during World War II.
• Future president Theodore Roosevelt led a group of soldiers called the Rough Riders (they were mostly cowboys, miners, and law-enforcement officials) in the Spanish-American War.
• The Samurai of Japan wore two swords—one long, one short—and gave them names, believing their swords were the “soul” of their warriorship.
• The Swiss Guard were mercenaries (paid soldiers) who fought in various European armies. Now their only job is to guard the Pope in Vatican City.
• The Spartan boys of ancient Greece were sent to military school at age 6 or 7 and stayed there until they were 20.
• Members of the elite warrior class of the ancient Aztec army were known as “eagle warriors.”
•
Ninja
is a Japanese word that means “to do quietly.”
Name games that inspired the teams
.
•
Anaheim Mighty Ducks:
In 1993, the NHL put a brand-new team in Anaheim, California. It was owned by Disney, which named the team after its 1992 hockey movie,
The Mighty Ducks
.
•
Boston Bruins:
The guidelines for a 1920s contest to name the team requested that the name “relate to an untamed animal whose name was synonymous with size, strength, agility, ferocity and cunning; and in the color brown category.” Bruin, another name for a brown bear, fit the order.
•
Calgary Flames:
Before they moved to Calgary, the Flames were based in Atlanta, Georgia. They chose their name as a reference to the burning of Atlanta during the Civil War.
•
Detroit Red Wings:
When James Norris bought the team in 1932, he changed their name from the Falcons to honor a team he once played for—the Montreal Winged Wheelers.
•
New Jersey Devils:
Named after the Jersey Devil, a mythical monster that supposedly lives in New Jersey.
• Many cultures have their own versions of fast food: In Asia there are noodle shops, in the Middle East there are falafel stands, and ancient Roman cities had bread-and-olive stands.
• One out of every seven Americans eats a diet made up almost
entirely
of fast food.
• 96% of all Americans have been to a McDonald’s. Or to put it another way, only 4% of Americans have
never
been to a McDonald’s.
• Number of sesame seeds on a Big Mac: 178.
• The British Nutrition Foundation reported that McDonald’s Caesar Salad with Chicken Premiere contains 18 grams of fat. A cheeseburger contains only 11.
• Brits eat over 22,000 tons of french fries per week.
• Wendy’s introduced the “drive-thru” window in 1972.
• One of Coke’s ingredients—called “7x”—is a secret. The few people who know what it is aren’t allowed to travel together, in case they all get in an accident.
• Dick and Mac McDonald opened the first McDonald’s restaurant in San Bernardino, California, in 1940, selling barbecue.
• First fast food restaurant in North America: White Castle in Topeka, Kansas. They opened in 1921. Hamburgers cost 5¢ each.
SECRET LIVES
OF FICTIONAL
CHARACTERS
Ever wonder where Kermit the Frog got his name?
• What do Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Snow White, and Godzilla have in common? They all have stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
• Smoky Bear’s original name: “Hot Foot Teddy.”
• Mickey Mouse has three fingers and a thumb on each hand.
• In Lima, Peru, there’s a tall brass statue of…Winnie the Pooh.
• James Bond debuted in the 1952 novel
Casino Royale
. Since then, he’s appeared in 53 books, 23 films, a TV show, and a dozen video games.
• Where did Shrek get his accent? Mike Myers based it on the voice his mother used when she told him bedtime stories.
• Kermit the Frog was named for Kermit Scott, a childhood friend of Muppet creator Jim Henson. The Muppet also delivered the commencement address at New York’s Southampton College in 1996.
• Studies show that boys’ hair grows faster than girls’.
• Fish scales, reptile scales, fingernails, and feathers are made of the same stuff as hair.
• Spiders are hairy all over.
• The hairiest animal in the world is the chinchilla. It has about 60 hairs sprouting from each hair follicle.
• Hair grows faster in warm weather.
• From one strand of hair, scientists can determine what you eat, if you smoke, and your ethnic origin. What they can’t tell: your gender.
• In Costa Rica, women decorate their hair with fireflies.
• Any creature with skin or fur can get dandruff, but when animals get it it’s called “dander.”
• Shirley Temple’s hairstyle had exactly 56 curls.
• Crabs are equipped with small hairs on their claws that help them detect vibrations and water currents.
• Leila’s Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri, specializes in antique jewelry made of hair.
• A single strand of hair can support 100 grams of weight, about the weight of 20 Hershey Kisses. Based on that, an entire head of hair—about 130,000 hairs—should technically be able to lift two full-grown elephants. (But don’t try it.)
Let’s pay a visit to the city that never sleeps
.
• The MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas washes 15,000 pillowcases every day.
• Every year 100,000 people go to Las Vegas…to get married (230 marriage licenses are issued every day).
• If you wanted to sleep one night in every hotel room in Las Vegas, it would take you 329 years.
• Over 35 million people visit Las Vegas every year. Each of them loses an average of $665 while gambling.
• The most money ever won at a slot machine was $39,713,982.25, at Las Vegas’s Excalibur Hotel Casino on March 21, 2003. The winner was a 25-year-old software engineer who had fed the machine about $100 before hitting the jackpot.
• Only 10% of parents who visit Las Vegas bring their kids.
• The Spanish named
Las Vegas
, which means “the meadows,” in the 1800s. The area was an oasis for travelers along the pack-mule trail from New Mexico to California.