Uncle John’s Facts to Annoy Your Teacher Bathroom Reader for Kids Only! (10 page)

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Slip ’n Slide:
Ice isn’t actually slippery. Things slip on ice because a thin layer of ice melts when pressure is applied to it. That wet layer is what’s slippery.

A snail’s average speed: 0.02 mph.

Someone as successful as the president of the United States probably earned straight As from kindergarten through college, right? Not necessarily.

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Woodrow Wilson’s
teachers labeled him a “slow learner” because he was unable to read well until he was 11 years old. Yet Wilson went on to be the only president to date who earned a PhD.

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John F. Kennedy’s
sixth-grade teacher said that he was only an average student, and that his weakest subjects were spelling, science, and math. Two of his report cards from 1930 (when he was 13) show he struggled with foreign languages, too: at one school, he earned a D in French, and at another, a 64 percent average in Latin. One of his teachers wrote, “He can do better than this.”

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Andrew Johnson
didn’t go to school at all, and didn’t learn to read or write until he was 17 years old.

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George H. W. Bush
got many Cs in school, and some of his teachers were unimpressed with his intelligence. One said, “He just sat in class and handed in papers…He showed no imagination or originality.”

The polecat is not a cat. It’s a weasel.

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Ulysses S. Grant
went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1839, but only because his father made him go. Grant wanted to be a tanner, someone who makes leather, not the military man his father wanted him to be. He struggled with the school’s math-heavy curriculum, but finally graduated in 1843, with a C average.

THE HIGH SCORERS

Not all U.S. presidents struggled in school, though. Bill Clinton’s classmates said that the only mystery about his grades was whether “he’d get a high A or a low A.” And Barack Obama’s fifth-grade teacher called him “a really smart student.”

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PRESIDENTIAL WISE GUY

One president definitely left an impression—not for his grades, but for his antics. According to his teachers, George W. Bush was a handful. He once threw a football through a school window, and in fourth grade, he entertained his classmates by “drawing an ink moustache, goatee, and sideburns on himself.” That earned him a trip to the principal’s office.

John Quincy Adams was the first president with a pet reptile He kept an alligator in the East Room of the White House.

Q: Why do zombies eat brains? A: Because they taste good. Here are some more brainy facts.

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The average human brain weighs three pounds. (For comparison, all of your skin weighs about six pounds.)

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Animals (including people) yawn to wake up their brains. When you’re tired or bored, your brain becomes less alert. Yawning brings a lot of oxygen into your body quickly, and that stimulates your brain.

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The brain uses up about 20 percent of the blood and oxygen in the human body.

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Your brain cannot feel pain because there are no nerves in it. That’s why neurosurgeons can poke around in the brains of patients who are awake. (A headache is caused by pain in the nerves and muscles in your neck and skull, not a pain in the brain.)

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Your brain is made up of about 75 percent water. The rest is mostly protein and fat.

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Some animals—like sponges, jellyfish, and starfish—don’t have a brain.

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The human brain keeps growing until a person is about 18 years old.

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If you could spread your brain out flat, it would be the width of a pillowcase.

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Your brain is about the same consistency as Jell-O.

If you’re the student who’d be voted “most likely to put a rubber spider on your teacher’s desk,” you might like these creatures.

J
UST SHOOT ME!

There’s a good reason that the bullet ant, found in South American rain forests, is called that—people say getting stung by one of these creatures hurts as badly as getting shot. Biologists rate insect stings from 0 to 4 on the Sting Pain Index. A honeybee sting rates about a 2, but the bullet ant is a 4+! A bullet-ant sting won’t kill you, but you may feel nauseous, with burning and throbbing at the spot of the sting. And the pain can last for up to 24 hours.

But for many boys of the Satere-Mawe tribe in Brazil, the agonizing bullet-ant sting is just a part of growing up. During a ceremony that marks the passage from boyhood to manhood, many young tribesmen stick their hands into gloves filled with about 400 bullet ants—and their hands stay in the gloves for a full 10 minutes. After going through the ritual 20 times over the course of many months, the boys are finally considered men.

EIGHT-LEGGED DEATH

Bullet ants are wimps compared to the Sydney funnel-web spider—this creature can kill you in as little as 15 minutes. Often considered the world’s deadliest spider, the funnel-web’s fangs look kind of like a cat’s claws, except that they’re also coated with a deadly poison. When threatened, the funnel-web stands up on its back legs and bares its fangs. And those chompers are powerful. Bites have been known to pierce a person’s toenails. Once bitten, victims can expect to experience pain, drooling, vomiting, sweating, and unconsciousness, and the male funnel-webs are more dangerous than females. Not only that, but the spiders’ venom seems to affect apes, monkeys, and humans more than other mammals. Fortunately, an antidote is now available to counteract the funnel-web’s bite.

A bidet is a toilet-sized sink used for washing your behind.

SWIMMERS BEWARE

Bearded fireworms grow to be between two and six inches long, and they slither underwater along reefs and under rocks, mostly in the Atlantic Ocean. They’re slow, so they only pose a threat to humans who touch them. These worms are colorful creatures (usually bright orange) and are covered with fuzzy white bristles. They look cool, but their bristles are full of poison that will burn your skin. And the pain lasts for days, so if you’re exploring tidepools along the coast and you see a pretty, fuzzy worm, you might want to admire it from a distance.

About two million tons of rock were blasted away to create Mount Rushmore.

Just because you learned it in school doesn’t make it true.

FACT?
Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.

WRONG!
In 1862, in the middle of the Civil War, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order that made slavery illegal in the United States. But it didn’t really accomplish much. Slavery was already illegal in the North. In the South, where it was legal, the states had withdrawn from the country, igniting the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation specifically banned slavery in the southern states, which Lincoln no longer had authority over. Slavery wasn’t officially outlawed until the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865, after the end of the Civil War, the reinstatement of the southern states, and Lincoln’s death.

FACT?
Slavery is illegal in the United States.

WRONG!
The 13th Amendment banned the private ownership of slaves and the practice of slavery. But slavery isn’t absolutely illegal. It’s never been acted upon, but according to the 13th Amendment, the federal government can still make someone a slave as a punishment for a crime. And get this: Mississippi didn’t approve the 13th Amendment until 1994, meaning it was legal to own slaves there until that time. (Nobody actually did, though.)

A horse’s teeth take up more space than its brain.

Tired of the same old cafeteria lunch? Try one of these food festivals or cook-offs.

F
ood Festival:
Waurika Rattlesnake Hunt

Location:
Waurika, Oklahoma

Explanation:
Contestants compete for a $150 prize for the longest rattlesnake caught in the woods. Afterward, everybody eats deep-fried rattlesnake (which tastes like stringy chicken).

Food Festival:
The Roadkill Cook-off

Location:
Marlintown, West Virginia

Explanation:
Each September, chefs gather to cook “found” meat. Don’t worry—people aren’t running over animals just so they can cook them. In fact, the festival doesn’t even allow “actual” roadkill, just the meat of animals most commonly killed in traffic. Past winners include “Stir-Tired Possum,” “Rigormortis Bear Stew,” and “Thumper Meets Bumper.”

Most of the sweaters Mr. Rogers wore on TV were knitted by his mother.

Food Festival:
National Baby Food Festival

Location:
Fremont, Michigan

Explanation:
Fremont is the home of Gerber, the world’s largest baby food manufacturer. Every July, the city and company hold this festival, which includes a baby crawl race, a baby food speed-eating contest (for adults) in which two people simultaneously feed each other five jars of food, and a cooking contest in which some of the ingredients have to be Gerber baby food.

Food Festival:
Waikiki Spam Jam

Location:
Waikiki, Hawaii

Explanation:
Spam (it’s mostly ham, pork shoulder, and spices) is extremely popular in Hawaii. American troops introduced it to the islands during World War II, and the people there embraced it. Today, Hawaii consumes more Spam than any other state, and it’s such a part of the culture that it has its own festival. Past dishes have included barbecue Spam, seaweed-wrapped Spam, and Spam pizza. Don’t forget to get your picture taken with the walking Spam-can!