Uncle John’s Facts to Annoy Your Teacher Bathroom Reader for Kids Only! (4 page)

When he left the army, Pujol went to work as a baker (and earned a reputation for making fantastic muffins). But in 1887, he wanted a change in life, so he put together a farting act and landed a gig at the most famous theater in Paris: the Moulin Rouge.

On the night of his first stage appearance, the audience initially didn’t know what to think. He started off imitating cannon fire and thunder, blowing out candles, and tooting out songs on his ocarina. Finally, the audience started to laugh…and laugh. Some women even fainted from all the laughing because their corsets were so tight they couldn’t take deep enough breaths.

Elephant dung is almost odorless.

THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS

Pujol’s act quickly became popular, and within two years he was the highest-paid entertainer in France. He kept up his unusual job until he retired in 1914.

When Pujol died in 1945, the famous Sorbonne University in Paris asked his family to donate his body to science…so doctors at its medical school could study his insides and figure out how he was able to make such incredible farts. But his family turned them down and instead buried him at a cemetery in southern France.

Actual headline: TREES CAN BREAK WIND.

SP
RTS STUPIDITY

Sports stars make great plays, but they can also make some really bad decisions. Like these guys.

•
In 1912, a team of college all-stars—the
Norfolk Blues
—challenged the football team at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., to a game. The Blues thought they’d have no trouble clobbering their opponent because Gallaudet had a lower-ranked team. So they were shocked when the underdogs shut them out 20–0. How did they win? Gallaudet is a college for the deaf, and the Blues talked openly about what plays they were going to run, thinking they were safe because the Gallaudet players couldn’t hear them. The kicker? Gallaudet teaches all of its students to lip-read.

•
The Dallas Cowboys were playing the Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl in 1993 when Cowboys defenseman
Leon Lett
recovered a fumble and headed for his team’s end zone. But then he made a stupid mistake. A couple of yards before he crossed the goal line, he started celebrating his “certain” touchdown…and didn’t see the Bills’ Don Beebe coming up behind him. Beebe stripped the ball, and Lett didn’t score.

*      *      *

“Always root for the winner. That way, you won’t be disappointed.”

—Tug McGraw, baseball player

Q: What 7-letter word contains 10 words without rearranging any letters?
A:
Therein
—the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, herein, therein.

Everyone loves to get out of class once in a while…okay, all the time. Next time your teacher asks for ideas, suggest one of these museums.

T
HE COCKROACH HALL OF FAME

There aren’t many people who’d set up an entire museum dedicated to one of the ickiest insects ever to crawl the earth. But exterminator Michael Bohdan from Plano, Texas, did. He’s always been fascinated by bugs and, in the 1980s, entered a contest looking for the biggest cockroach in Texas. His two-inch-long roach (now mounted behind glass on his office wall) won first place and the $1,000 prize. And that got him thinking…what about a museum full of roaches?

So next door to his pest-control shop, Bohdan opened the Cockroach Hall of Fame. His main attraction: dead cockroaches dressed up in tiny outfits and placed in various scenes. There’s Marilyn Monroach, a musician roach playing the piano, two roaches sunbathing on a miniature beach, and more than 20 others. Plus, there’s a display of live Madagascar hissing cockroaches, and visitors can hold the bugs…if they have the courage.

DEAD SQUIRREL-VILLE

In 1995, Sam Sanfillippo was a mortician living in Madison, Wisconsin, when he took up taxidermy as a hobby. (A taxidermist stuffs the skins of dead animals so they can be put on display.) His subjects? Dead squirrels. Sanfillippo says he uses “ones that had been hit by cars or died of heart attacks or whatever.” He put them on display in the basement of the Cress Funeral Home, where he worked.

In the years since, Sanfillippo has put together a collection of stuffed, mounted squirrels in various poses. There’s a squirrel on a bucking bronco, five squirrels playing poker, a squirrel “family” riding a Ferris wheel, and dozens of others. And it wasn’t all just for fun. Sanfillippo says the stuffed squirrels made the people who came to funerals at his mortuary feel more relaxed: “They don’t know what to do—the old people—at funerals, you know.” So he’d send them into the basement to look at the squirrels, and they’d always come out laughing. Today, the collection is called the Dead Pals of Sam Sanfillippo, and anyone can visit them.

MORE WEIRD MUSEUMS

•
Circus World Museum: Baraboo, Wisconsin

•
The Museum of Bad Art: Deadham, Massachusetts

•
Kansas Barbed Wire Museum: Lacrosse, Kansas

•
International UFO Museum and Research Center: Roswell, New Mexico

A cat’s lower jaw cannot move sideways.

It’s everywhere…underfoot, in your clothes, on your face. What’s the deal with dirt
?

•
Dirt is made mostly from rocks. Over thousands of years, wind and water erode the rocks into smaller and smaller pieces. Then other things—like animal droppings and dead plants—mix in with the rock dust to create soil.

•
About 50 to 250 earthworms make their homes in an average acre of lawn.

•
The carpet in your house can hold twice its weight in dirt.

•
About 80 percent of the dirt in a house comes inside on people: stuck to their shoes, clothes, skin, and hair.

•
People in many cultures (Africa, Mongolia, even the United States) eat mud. They consider it healthy for pregnant women—a way for their bodies to get the minerals they need. One American mud-eater says, “The good stuff is real smooth…just like a piece of candy.”

•
Some animals, like pigs and elephants, cover themselves in mud to protect and cool their skin.

Found in a fortune cookie: “He who throws dirt loses ground.”

Making trouble in class is an old tradition—students have been doing it for hundreds of years. A few of those time-honored techniques (and some creatures to make your teacher shriek) are hidden in the schoolhouse-shaped puzzle to the right.

ARM FARTING

BUBBLE GUM

BUGS

COMIC BOOKS

FAKE EYEBALLS

FERRET

GARLIC

ITCHING POWDER

NEWT

PRANKS

PUPPY

SALAMANDER

SILLY NOTES

SNAKES SPIDERS

WHISPERING

WORMS

YO-YO

Say “I love you” in Swahili:
Nakupenda
.

Answers on
page 242
.

Hummingbirds have the highest metabolic rate of any animal on earth.

Uncle John has a talking dog named Porter who can’t keep a secret. Last week, he told the mailman all about Uncle John’s collection of purple polka-dot underwear. Here are some more secrets that just couldn’t stay hidden.

S
MARTY PANTS
Actor Matt Damon was such a good student in high school that he was accepted to Harvard University. He attended the college for four years (from 1988 to 1992), but never graduated. He dropped out to become an actor instead.

THE MUSIC MAN

Professional skateboarder Tony Hawk loves to play the violin. He started when he was about six, the same time he got his first skateboard, and played until he was nine. But his two hobbies took up a lot of time, and eventually, he had to make a choice. So he gave up the instrument and concentrated on skateboarding. He always missed playing music, though, so he picked up the violin again as a young adult and has played ever since.

TOP-SECRET INGREDIENT

Cookbook author and television chef Julia Child was doing a lot more than learning to whip up dinner before she became famous. She was a secret agent. During World War II, Child worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was the predecessor of the CIA. One of Child’s jobs involved inventing shark repellent; the animals sometimes bumped into underwater explosives and set them off. This let the German submarines know in advance where the bombs were—not so sneaky. So Child and a few other spies got together and made a repellent to coat the bombs and keep the sharks away.